Team Spirit

Full Moon in prestart maneuvers. Time to polish that hull!

Full Moon crew Randy “Corona” Olsen, Dave “Scotch” Pulsifer, Judy “Seltzer” Tiffany, and skipper John “Summer Ale” Mengedoht got caught in a tight squeeze between Scat and another boat at the start of the Superbowl/Team Spirit Duck Dodge and were quite literally shoved back into the second row in extremely light breeze. Spotting more wind toward the Eastlake shore, Full Moon tacked away from the direct course to the Freeway buoy. This meant being only a few yards from the start line five minutes later but did eventually pay off fairly well, though a number of boats were still ahead, including arch-rival Zephyr and the T-bird Zoe.

More of the prestart. Not much wind...

The Freeway mark rounding was tight and slow but Full Moon was still in the hunt and only 300 yards or so behind giant Neptune’s Car from the first start (with Full Moon regular Michael Medina aboard). In such light air, a spinnaker can be a liability if it can’t be kept full and Full Moon elected to stick with the jib instead and hold it out to catch any wind. This may or may not have been a wise choice as some boats passed by with spinnakers. Full Moon worked south into a bit more breeze, though, and repassed all the boats that had done well under spinnaker plus a few more. This move also set things up nicely to round the Aurora buoy, coming in on starboard jibe with right of way.

70' Neptune's Car in first start with Michael Medina on board.

The rounding was again crowded with Full Moon on the inside, Scat next but a bit forward, and a good sized pinwheel outside of Scat. Zephyr was somewhere in the middle and, based on the shouting, must have cut inside a boat or two without having rights to do so.

Second start and third start boats mix it up downwind. Full Moon is out of the picture to the west.

Escaping the buoy, Scat was in the perfect lee-bow position and slowly pulled out ahead as Full Moon clawed to windward to gain some separation. Full Moon stayed close to Scat and closed up a bit on speedy Dreams while continuing to climb to windward to maintain clear air in a slightly building breeze. With several boats battling, the windward position paid off as Full Moon passed the Capri 25 Triple Time and Zoe while holding off the big Buchan 37 Distance. Distance then poked their bow between Full Moon and Scat, setting things up well for Full Moon to have the inside position at the AGC buoy.

Another great sunset!

Reaching to the finish line, Full Moon made sure Distance could not get by to windward but could not stop them from dropping down to leeward. A bigger boat with much taller sails, Distance slowly gained to nip Full Moon by just a few feet at the finish line to take 5th with Full Moon an excellent 6th and Scat back in 8th. Zephyr appeared to finish 12th a few minutes later.