Hazy Daze

And we're off! Speedy Scat is in the foreground with Full Moon in front.

Full Moon went a little conservative for the start of the Tropical Night Duck Dodge, opting to approach the line on starboard tack instead of the favored port tack, but still enjoyed a decent start. Crew Randy “Vitamin R” Olsen, Chuck “Boomer” Weldy, Judy “Chips” Tiffany, Dave “Footballer” Pulsifer, Daniel “Last Race” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Cheap Leis” Mengedoht had a straight shot to the Freeway buoy (in the usual converging traffic), followed by heading to the “beach” at Gasworks and then a tack toward the Aurora buoy.

Tropical crew of Full Moon.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to lay the Aurora buoy without more tacking and Full Moon ended up tacking ahead of a Catalina and just to windward of Invader (T-bird), the result being a Full Moon sandwich to squeak around the buoy. Once around, the Equalizer was soon hoisted for speeds up to 6.13 knots on a nice long beam reach. The Equalizer came down cleanly to round the AGC buoy and then it was time to head for the floating “island” serving as the Chandler’s Cove buoy.

Heart Attack gets their beers at the "island."

The J80 Heart Attack was inexplicably slow on approach to the island so Full Moon went wide on an attempted pass. Heart Attack then found some speed to pull clear ahead and Full Moon hardened up so as to go just behind Heart Attack to grab a few free beers from the island, while letting the sails luff a bit to ensure we didn’t bump Heart Attack from behind. Unfortunately, this move apparently messed up the approach from behind by the Catalina 30 Necessary Evil, her skipper having a few unkind words. Like it or not, Full Moon was obligated not to run into Heart Attack from behind and Necessary Evil had the same obligation toward Full Moon whether beer was able to be obtained or not…

Wildfires in Canada and Eastern Washington provided a smoky haze.

The long upwind leg north required only two tacks to nicely lay the Freeway buoy before again heading to the Gasworks Park bulkhead. Two more tacks brought Full Moon to the Aurora buoy, this time with no traffic to worry about. The wind had dropped quite a bit by this time and the spinnaker reach/run was a lot slower. On approach to the AGC buoy, the wind dropped and then shifted to the NE, leaving Full Moon on the wrong gybe as we raised the jib and dropped the Equalizer. This allowed Necessary Evil to get by, sailing inside Full Moon at the buoy.

Selchie had a bigger crew than normal but were still very hard to beat!

There were a lot of boats milling about the island in light air and they usually run out of beer during the first lap so Full Moon elected to stay clear instead of tacking a few times for a beer run. This paid off handsomely, allowing Full Moon to pass not only Necessary Evil but also Tonic (Peterson 34) and Selchie (T-bird) to finish in what we believe was fifth place.