One Good Turn

Full Moon at the start in very light wind with Zephyr in the background.

The wind for Goosebump race No. 2 was forecast to be extremely light and the crews were all hoping to avoid a drifter with the Seahawks playing for the NFC Championship at 3:30. Fortunately, the wind filled in nicely out of the north at about 10 knots just before the race start. Full Moon crew Randy “Rusty” Olsen, Art “Rusty” Teller, Daniel “Rusty” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Rusty” Mengedoht hadn’t raced since September but managed a mid-pack start. The big J145 Jedi had a worse start, being over early and not returning to restart, but was penalized two minutes rather than given a DNF or DSQ.

Full Moon did reasonably well tacking on the shifts upwind but had a close call underestimating the speed of Lulu, tacking too close (sorry Lulu – I definitely owe you one). Once past Lulu, Full Moon rounded the Freeway buoy not far behind rival Zephyr (San Juan 28). Full Moon stayed close to Zephyr on the close reach past Gasworks but could not prevent Wizard (J27) from rolling past to windward.

Zephyr attempting to pass to windward.

Rounding the Aurora buoy, there was a short delay hoisting the spinnaker but Zephyr was slow with their hoist as well and Full Moon pulled ahead. Zephyr then altered course to steal Full Moon’s wind (good move) and, amazingly, tried to pass to windward (risky move!). Full Moon hailed “leeward!” and began to turn up to thwart the pass but it was clear Zephyr wasn’t going to yield, her skipper yelling back some nonsense about the definition of “leeward.”  Since Zephyr’s skipper has been sailing and racing long enough to know better, you can draw your own conclusions about this tactic. However, it wasn’t worth a collision to make a point and Full Moon turned back downwind. The two boats ended up mostly side by side all the way down the lake, Full Moon just slightly faster in the puffs but unable to pull ahead without going into Zephyr’s wind shadow and slowing back down. Full Moon did get by Wizard, though, and maybe another boat or two while staying ahead of a couple of theoretically faster J boats.

Approaching the AGC buoy, the J30 Slingshot finally caught up just before the 3 boat-length circle, maneuvering inside and establishing right of way over Zephyr to round the buoy, at least under the formal racing rules (not adopted for this series). This apparently didn’t go over very well aboard Zephyr but, as Zephyr and Slingshot fought it out, Full Moon was provided ample room to turn inside both boats. To avoid the ongoing scrap, Full Moon then tacked away from both boats and into clear air. This took Full Moon into the path of boats still coming down the lake under spinnaker but it was soon obvious that this course was going to pay off handsomely compared to all the boats that rounded without tacking.

Full Moon heading for the finish line!

Wizard and the J24 Fat Chance followed Full Moon but couldn’t quite catch up as Full Moon finished close behind the relative giant Yankee III (Sabre 40) to take eighth place, an outstanding result given the mediocre start and nearly 40 racers out on the lake. Our old rival Ignitor (Martin 29) scored fifth, just ahead of speedy Scat (custom 25). Zephyr ended up much farther behind in 17^th place. Karma?