Off Like a Prom Dress

Full Moon enjoys the NW breeze on the second leg.

Full Moon crew Dave “High Side” Pulsifer, Judy “Maternity Dress” Tiffany, Erin “Tall” Osberg, Daniel “Almost Up” Mengedoht, and skipper John “To the Edge” Mengedoht sported a matching set of “tux” tee shirts for the Prom Night Duck Dodge to go along with the obligatory mirror ball suspended from the back stay. With a solid northwest breeze, Full Moon set up nicely for a port tack start at the pin but had to dodge some traffic stalled out ahead, some of whom appeared to be over the line early.

Daniel enjoys his perch near the mast.

Once clear of wind shadows, it was a straight romp to the Freeway buoy, much of it side by side with a dark blue J24 nicely decorated with speed-enhancing balloons. Converging boats made for a tight rounding with several overlaps. Full Moon was inside and immediately tacked at the buoy to avoid a boat directly in front as well as traffic coming in on starboard tack.

The Equalizer pulls hard down the lake.

The Aurora buoy was set north of the main shipping channel and Full Moon stayed on starboard tack nearly all the way across the lake before tacking north on what looked like the lay line until the breeze clocked around a bit. It was still a short tack to reach the buoy and then around onto a beam reach.

Necessary Evil leads Full Moon to the finish line.

The strong breeze and wind angle made using the Equalizer a bit of a gamble but it was sent up all the same. It took some work to get a full hoist and then the sheet had to be dumped a few times to avoid rounding up but then things settled down and Full Moon took off, reaching an indicated 6.71 knots. This created a nice separation from the Catalina 30 Necessary Evil and allowed Full Moon to close the gap on boats ahead.

Deception lost a bit of their "limo" decor during the race.

The Equalizer came down cleanly at the AGC buoy and Full Moon rounded just behind a large boat before taking off upwind. Necessary Evil put her size to good advantage to claw ahead to leeward while Full Moon hung on to hold off the dark blue J24 to the finish line. In the end, it appeared Full Moon cracked the top ten while putting at least a full leg on old rivals Zephyr and Ignitor. Another lap would have been fun, though the sun is heading down a bit earlier these days…