Full Moon Dog II

The wind was a bit light during the prestart...

Full Moon crew Randy “Cornbread” Olsen, Michael “Chili” Medina, Rolf “Ice Boat” Van Houten, and John “Kraken” Mengedoht jumped ship again for the Rum Run, sailing aboard the Shilshole-based Ranger 26 Moon Dog rather than take Full Moon through the locks. Moon Dog has trashed sails, apart from the rarely used spinnaker, and a less than slippery bottom so we knew we would be uncompetitive but that was completely okay!

Moon Dog is on the right, flying the One Good Sail.

After a somewhat leisurely downwind start in light air, the One Good Sail was hoisted and Moon Dog actually passed a couple of boats while holding steady with some others. This didn’t last, though, and things got much worse when the spinnaker take-down took a little too long, leaving Moon Dog farther south of the West Point buoy than desirable and creating a few white-knuckle moments for Michael at the helm. By the time Moon Dog was pointed back north, we were either dead last or close to it.

Moon Dog battled Cricket for a while until the bigger boat pulled ahead for good.

Upwind, Moon Dog is especially slow and, even though the wind was building, it seemed to take forever to reach the Meadow Point buoy, the flooding current not helping with that. Once around, it was time for a lively close reach across the Sound, the wind rising into the 20 knot range. This was too much for the genoa and, given the challenges of swapping sails on the roller-furler, we elected just to roll up some of the sail to make it smaller. This made things manageable but it was still a wild ride!

Moon Dog is near the right end of the raft-up.

By the time Moon Dog arrived at the finish, the Committee Boat had pulled up anchor to join the raft-up in Port Madison. Moon Dog quickly dropped (or rolled) sails and headed for the raft-up as well, enjoying some respite from the wind and the warmth of the sun. After a late lunch and some HBRs, it was time to head back. The wind was, if anything, even stronger and the genoa was more than sufficient all by itself to propel Moon Dog to hull speed and beyond for a nice romp back to Shilshole.

Two cruise ships came through on the return trip to Shilshole.