Decade of Confusion

The Seattle skyline is always awesome from the lake.

Full Moon crew Randy “Low Side” Olsen, Michael “Bundle Up” Medina, Marcelle “Spider Legs” Van Houten, Ben “Sail Marketing” Spicer, Daniel “Just Visiting” Mengedoht, and skipper John “6.5 Decades” Mengedoht opted to try second start for the Decades Night Duck Dodge in hopes of reduced traffic. The plan was a port tack start near, but not at, the Committee Boat and this happened – but only by tacking late and not having full speed at the start. Still, Full Moon got moving pretty well after clearing a little traffic and ended up with nearly a rhumb line approach to the Freeway buoy.

Daniel, Randy and Ben with different things on their minds.

After sailing nearly to the Gasworks shore, Full Moon ended up only needing a couple of tacks to make the Aurora buoy. Unfortunately, the Equalizer halyard and jib halyard got fouled, making for a slow hoist. With the Equalizer powered up, Full Moon then pulled ahead of all boats behind and made significant gains on the boats ahead, apart from a zippy Ultimate 20 that was nearly planing down the lake under asymmetric spinnaker.

Only a few of the many boats behind Full Moon during the final leg.

The Equalizer had to come down before the jib could go back up due to the halyard mess, which slowed Full Moon down a bit. Then the wind dropped to next to nothing approaching the AGC buoy, making for a painful slow rounding.

Michael is snug and warm in the sunset glow.

The final leg was a straight and fairly speedy shot to the finish line once the wind filled back in. Full Moon was nowhere near the second start leaders but stayed ahead of a number of fast boats all the same and was probably somewhere in the middle of the fleet. The sunset was gorgeous if way too early as the days get shorter. Only two more races, noooo!!!!

One more sunset picture...