Back in Action

Full Moon returned to racing action Tuesday (finally!) for Duck Dodge #3. Crew Marcelle “Safety Orange” Van Houten, Allison “Lulu Lemon” Bahe, Michael “Grand Mal” Medina, Dave “Blue Fleck” Pulsifer, and skipper John “4 hour” Mengedoht set up for a port tack start near the pin end but were a bit early and lost some speed while maneuvering to stay behind the starting line. It was still a decent start, followed by a nice tight reach to the Freeway buoy, where a large knot of boats rounded together in tight formation, Full Moon right behind Dreams (Olson 25) and not far behind speedy Selchie (Thunderbird).

Nice crowd at the Freeway mark.

With all the traffic, Full Moon delayed tacking until nearing the fixed green buoy off Gasworks, dodging two large powerboats in the process. Full Moon then sailed fairly far west, crossing tacks just ahead of Selchie, which chose to duck behind. After a quick tack, things looked good for a nice rounding of the Aurora buoy (in traffic again) but a trimaran could not lay the mark and tacked, forcing Full Moon to take a much wider path to keep clear.

Rare shot of Selchie behind (they had a LOT of crew!).

Once around the buoy, the Equalizer was quickly launched to good effect on a nice beam reach. Unfortunately, relative giant Runaway (Norlin 34) was ahead and to windward, making a pass to leeward difficult. Full Moon stayed in the wind, ahead of Selchie, which in turn held off Necessary Evil (Catalina 30). Meanwhile, Full Moon slowly worked east as Runaway faded west, opening up enough of a lateral gap to allow Full Moon to get through the wind shadow. At the same time, Full Moon was gaining on Dreams and managed to squeeze ahead not long before the AGC buoy. Dreams was able to take a better turn at the buoy, though, and lined up just to windward after rounding, slowly pulling back ahead. The final leg was then a straight shot north to the finish line where Full Moon took an excellent eighth.