Jammie Time

The sun dips down too early these days but it sure was nice out there!
Art Teller photos

The Pajama Night Duck Dodge served up sunny skies and a nice warm breeze from the north to encourage lightweight sleepwear but it appears most of Seattle sleeps in teeshirts and shorts. Full Moon crew Art “Bandaid” Teller, Katie “Pale Ale” Freels, Don “Porter” Caffrey, Chuck “Black Butte” Weldy, Daniel “Coke Control” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Corona” Mengedoht were similarly attired apart from the skipper’s sexy nightshirt.

With the first leg set up to the “Freeway” buoy, the starting line favored the right side but a port tack start on the left looked like a straight shot to the buoy with no tacks. Full Moon went for the port tack approach rather than risk being sandwiched in the starboard tackers and unable to tack out. This worked to plan, once free of a few others with the same idea, though the boats that nailed the start on the right still had a small lead.

Approaching the Freeway buoy, Full Moon was in good company with Scat just ahead, the Santana 20 Sushi (moved up from 3^rd start this week) just to port with an inside overlap, and Runner not far behind. Fortunately, new rival Zephyr was farther back and would remain quite far behind for the remainder of the race. After rounding the buoy, Full Moon continued to hold off Runner while crossing tacks with Scat. Sushi stayed just ahead, though, and Full Moon would need to work hard to beat her ex-third-start rival.

The mighty Equalizer went up quickly for the downwind leg and Full Moon passed a boat or two but also got passed by the relative giant (36’) Mata Hari. The second lap continued much the same way until the second spinnaker run where Full Moon finally overtook Sushi for good, picked off a J22, and nearly caught both a blue Thunderbird and the J29 Salsa. Salsa should have been much farther ahead at this point (they rate much faster and have at least two second-start gold ducks this year) so Full Moon was sailing well!

After rounding the AGC buoy to head for the finish, Full Moon initially suffered in bad wind from boats ahead (this is what happens when you nearly catch bigger boats!) but held off Sushi to officially place tenth, an excellent finish in a large fleet full of fast boats.