Red One Down!

Michael and the rest of the crew sporting their red, white and blue.

Full Moon crew Michael “Not Me” Medina, Katie “Guacamole Sole” Freels, Dave “Other Left” Pulsifer, Judy “Suction Cups” Tiffany, and skipper John “Not Last” Mengedoht enjoyed a good start near the center of the line for the Red, White and Blue Duck Dodge. Very light wind and close proximity to old rival Ignitor made it a challenge to get much speed going until the wind filled in about halfway to the AGC buoy.

The second leg to the Chandler’s buoy was short but downwind and the Equalizer was quickly launched to good effect. The next leg to the Freeway buoy should have then been a nice beam reach but 100 yards past the buoy, the wind filled in and shifted to the northwest. This angle didn’t work for the Equalizer, which proved a handful to get back down with the wind coming from ahead of the boat. In the ensuing chaos, the red (port) spinnaker sheet somehow escaped to plunge to a watery grave. Drat!

The wind continued to clock further to the north and Full Moon actually needed to tack twice to reach the Freeway buoy. The leg back south might have worked for the spinnaker but not without a replacement sheet. Still, the genoa provided relatively decent speed to the AGC buoy.

The rest of the second lap was relatively uneventful, Full Moon finishing somewhere in the middle of the second start fleet. Meanwhile, a great time was had by all and it didn’t rain!