Ducked Again!

Daniel scores the prize from the Committee Boat.

Yet another duck joins the flock.

Fading wind made positioning for the start of the “70s Night” Duck Dodge a little trickier than normal but Full Moon crew Art “Humushoe” Teller, Tammy “Wind Whisperer” Cross, Robert “New Again” Leykam, Daniel “i-Pod” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Induced Heel” Mengedoht managed to be more or less in the front row of boats. Joining Full Moon in third start was old rival Shogun. Full Moon initially pulled away from Shogun but as the wind began dying, they found a better path and pulled back in front. Meanwhile, the Santana 20 Sushi had picked up a decent bit of breeze by the Westlake shore and took over the lead before stalling out near the AGC buoy.

Converging boats and boats trying to escape the buoy area under spinnaker made for a morass of barely moving hulls. Full Moon eventually made it around and launched the mighty Equalizer. As the wind had clocked around a bit, the course was much closer to the wind than ideal for a symmetrical spinnaker but the greater sail area was worth the bargain in the very light breeze. Full Moon soon passed Shogun again plus a few others, including some from second start. At this point, it was hard to know exactly what position we were in other than being very far behind Sushi!

After passing a few more boats, Full Moon engaged in a slow-motion battle with a well-sailed Cal 30, rounding the Freeway buoy not far behind them. As the Aurora buoy had been placed about as far northwest as possible, the leg past Gasworks was agonizingly slow, though there was some comic relief from a conversation with a person aboard the Buchan 37 Distance (see the previous post).

Full Moon did get by the Cal before rounding the buoy and then set the Equalizer once again for what was now a downwind reach and run to the finish, still in extremely light breeze. Full Moon managed to pass the San Juan 28 Zephyr from second start and continued to battle the Cal 30, finally pulling ahead for good just yards from the finish line. Nearly two hours after the start, Full Moon finally oozed past the Committee Boat to find that we had managed to pull off third place and the Bronze Duck!