Fabulous Finale

Enjoying a cold one at the dock before heading out on the lake.

The final Duck Dodge of summer is always Martini Night aboard Full Moon, with a bigger crew than usual (and three coolers of food, beverages and ice!) to celebrate the season. While struggling a bit with the extra weight, Full Moon crew Randy “8-Track” Olsen, Art “More Olives” Teller, Michael “Did Nothing” Medina, Marcelle “Did Something!” Van Houten, Dave “Big Pull” Pulsifer, Troy “Dirty Tini” Charlesworth, Daniel “Olives Away” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Gandalf” Mengedoht still nailed the start on port tack near the middle of the line and managed a fairly straight shot to the Freeway buoy. Converging boats at the buoy made things interesting, Full Moon holding off for a clear lane before tacking to the west.

Daniel demonstrates proper shaker technique to the crew.

On the second leg, Full Moon battled with relatively large Black Watch until they finally got by. Necessary Evil (Catalina 30) could not catch up, however, suffering in Full Moon’s bad air. Meanwhile, old rival Ignitor (Martin 29), which had been briefly ahead at the Freeway buoy, chose a path closer to Gasworks. This didn’t pay off for them and allowed Full Moon to get ahead approaching the Aurora buoy.

Full Moon is second from the right in this shot of the start.

The mighty Equalizer was launched to good effect after rounding the buoy but Ignitor continued to threaten from behind, Full Moon maneuvering several times to remain safely in front. At the AGC buoy, Full Moon held off the spinnaker drop until the very end and thankfully it came down smoothly. In the process, Full Moon was able to round inside the wide turn taken by Black Watch, though Black Watch pulled back ahead after a few minutes (sometimes size does matter!).

Ignitor trying to catch up.

On the final upwind leg, Full Moon continued covering Ignitor while also keeping an eye on Necessarily Evil while they sailed at a lower but faster angle. Approaching the finish line, all looked good to vanquish all of Full Moon’s traditional rivals when suddenly Zephyr (San Juan 28) came flying up from behind with incredible speed. After a few moments of incredulity, the telltale sound of their diesel was heard, resolving the mystery and giving us all a good laugh. In the end, it appeared Full Moon had made the top ten finishers, though a good distance behind the fastest boats.

Art and Daniel enjoy the final leg.

To recap the season, a whopping thirty people made up the Full Moon crew at different times, trading a little consistency for providing a lot of people with an opportunity to sail, race, and enjoy the infamous Duck Dodge. The variety of fast and large boats in the second start made any serious pursuit of a vinyl duck sticker (top three finish) highly improbable but Full Moon did reasonably well measured against boats of similar performance potential, coming out ahead overall vs. old rivals Ignitor and Zephyr as well as new rival Necessary Evil. Regardless, the weather was (mostly) great and a wonderful time was had by all.

Zephyr flies by.