Team Tropical

Full Moon crew Randy “Bose” Olsen, Debra “Raspberry” Ricard, Don “Supportive Seat” Caffrey, Daniel “Twisted” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Pineapple” Mengedoht suffered from theme confusion for the Team Spirit Duck Dodge (skipper error!) but managed a fairly good start near the middle of the line. The ensuing close reaching drag race saw a convergence of boats at the Freeway buoy but no collisions and Full Moon emerged with a clear lane toward the Aurora buoy. This track worked out fairly well with Full Moon crossing tacks with speedy Scat and 36’ Mata Hari approaching the Aurora buoy.

The pole was hoisted before the buoy and the mighty Equalizer was quickly launched for a thrilling very fast reach toward the AGC buoy. Full Moon could not quite catch Mata Hari but Scat’s move toward the middle of the lake did not pay off and they rounded the AGC buoy a bit behind.

Heading back upwind was another no-tacks drag race toward the Freeway buoy. Scat eventually got past to windward and the big Buchan 37 Distance worked past to leeward but Full Moon was holding her own in the leading group of boats.

Full Moon flies past Gas Works on the second lap. Jeremy Jones photo.

Full Moon headed a little closer to Gas Works on the second lap in hopes of finding an advantage but the wind was pretty even across the north end of the lake. Still, Full Moon crossed tacks with Scat approaching the Aurora buoy – a good indicator that Full Moon had good speed.

Chasing Mata Hari (blue spinnaker) and Distance on the second lap.

Unfortunately, the Equalizer had a twist going up, delaying the hoist slightly and getting the clew wet. Still, Full Moon had good speed, matching Scat’s pace, as well as Mata Hari and Distance ahead. Unfortunately, it was soon clear that the wind had died around the AGC buoy as a large and growing pack of boats were essentially parked. The fleet was soon compressed with Full Moon nearly catching Selchie while even Ignitor and Zephyr caught up from behind. In the densely packed drift-a-thon of bumper boats, Full Moon was forced to take whatever path was available, very slowly inching around the buoy.

At this point, several boats started rocking back and forth to induce some forward motion (not exactly legal…) and Shogun came roaring by under power tossing water balloons. Two balloons landed on Full Moon, Don nicely deflecting one to prevent dilution of the beverage cups, but the spiffy new hypodermic style squirt gun was ready to hand and Full Moon returned fire, getting at least two of the Shogun crew wet before they could escape.

The wind eventually began to fill in from the north, leading to a nice romp to the finish line. Our best guesstimate is that Full Moon finished around 12^th but it was hard to tell. Ignitor fared well rounding the AGC buoy and had maneuvered ahead, catching the wind first to defeat Full Moon for the first time all summer. Zephyr, however, took a very wide rounding to avoid the mess and this cost them in the end.