Early Retirement

Deception disguised as a limousine for Prom Night.

Full Moon crew Randy “It’s Wet” Olsen, Dave “Wounded Knee” Pulsifer, Judy “It's The Green Line” Tiffany, Adam “Liveaboard” Michalak, Daniel “Hard Pull” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Twisted” Mengedoht enjoyed a rare near-perfect start for the Prom Night Duck Dodge, though hampered a bit by surrounding traffic. The middle of the lake provided better wind so Full Moon delayed tacking to the west toward the AGC buoy. Unfortunately, even a delayed tack led to troubles in the light air near the buoy and a couple of extra tacks were necessary to clear the buoy.

Once around, Mighty Isis (aka The Equalizer) was hoisted but with greater difficulty than normal. Worse, it would go no higher than the forestay instead of to the masthead, leaving the foot to dip into the lake during lulls and obscuring vision forward. It was clear the halyard was fouled but there was no simple fix so Full Moon persevered toward the Freeway buoy, still making good speed.

The jib was then raised a bit early in anticipation that the spinnaker might balk at coming down smoothly and, sure enough, it was jammed. Fortunately, it was possible to collapse the foot but a tack in the wrong direction was necessary to free the halyard and bring down the nylon cloud. Worse, it proved necessary to drop the jib in order to clear the fouled halyard. At this point, the back half of the third start fleet was cruising by and it was decided to just complete the first lap for style points and then retire to enjoy some “coldies.”