Damp Jammies

The first leg. Full Moon is barely visible on the left.

Full Moon crew Michael “Aluminum” Medina, Kate “Met Market” Freels, Chad “Snakebite” Harnish, Daniel “Dry” Mengedoht, and skipper John “QC” Mengedoht opted for foul weather gear instead of pajamas for the Pajama Night Duck Dodge and this proved a wise choice. A gray wall of clouds appeared above Lake Union and brought strong and gusty winds, along with a good bit of rain later in the race.

A good start was hampered by the massive 40’ Thundorca, which prevented an earlier tack for the line (totally fair, just unfortunate for Full Moon). Full Moon still did reasonably well on the beam/broad reach to the Freeway buoy, though quite a few boats catching up from behind in a gust bailed out from rounding the mark and opted not to circle back around. (This included Thundorca, which really should have refused their second-place duck sticker but, hey, it’s the Duck Dodge!) Unfortunately, the group of “cheaters” set Full Moon back in the fleet with little hope of catching up, especially to the larger boats.

It was a straight shot in lots of traffic to the Aurora buoy. After a wide rounding to avoid traffic, it was on to the AGC buoy with a wind angle way too tight for the spinnaker, not to mention that the wind was still fairly boisterous. Early in this leg is when the rain hit hard, though not for all that long.

The wind eased toward the south end of the lake and this might have been a clue to consider setting up the spinnaker for the final leg but then it was hard to predict if the wind would increase again closer to the finish. Better safe than sorry! In the end, a good time was had by all and none of us had to dry out any pajamas…