Briefly Glorious

The stars aligned for the Sock Hop Duck Dodge and Full Moon nailed the start near the favored Committee Boat end of the line. Crew Randy “Rainier” Olsen, Dave “Bodi” Pulsifer, Judy “Baba Ganoush” Tiffany, Katie “Fremont” Freels, Daniel “Perfect Pack” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Guido” Mengedoht were neck and neck with the Ranger 33 Seoladh until they faded back to dodge a drifting power boat. Speedy Scat tacked for the Westlake side of the lake but the wind proved better in the middle and Full Moon rounded the AGC buoy solidly in first place!

The Equalizer was soon launched for the long leg north, the apparent wind clocking from a beam reach to nearly dead downwind. It was a bit scary to thread through traffic on port gybe and needing to yield to every boat coming our way but Full Moon made it safely to the Freeway buoy for a clean drop and still in first place. The SSW wind direction made for a straight shot to the Aurora buoy but, unfortunately, the Norlin 34 Runaway managed to slip past before rounding.

Returning upwind, Scat and the Peterson 34 Tonic also managed to get by. However, Full Moon again kept to the middle of the lake, holding off on tacking to the west, and this paid off as the boats converged closely together to round the AGC buoy. Under spinnaker, Full Moon initially passed Runaway to move into third place but this didn’t last.

After another clean drop at the Freeway buoy, it was on to the Aurora buoy – but it had moved to the north! On approach, a couple of boats were coming at the buoy on starboard tack for some reason, though moving quite slowly. Full Moon took the stern of both boats (better safe than sorry) but a J22 and the J24 Monomoy cut between the starboard tackers in order to pass Full Moon. On the final leg, Full Moon could not quite overtake the two J-boats and had to settle for sixth place but it was still a terrific race and amazing to be first for a while. With all boats ahead save the J22 being inherently faster boats, this was a great finish!