Full Boat

Full Moon at the start (just to the right of the U.S. flag).

Full Moon was bumped up to second start for the Duck Dodge after doing a little too well in third start the past three weeks. Crew Randy “Artefact” Olsen, Daniel “Bonk” Mengedoht, Robert “Ugly Building” Leykam, Lucienne “Jazz” Grace, Logan “Connections” Pulsifer, Hannah “Learning Experience” Fitzpatrick, and skipper John “Starboard!” Mengedoht set up on starboard tack. Relative giant Beneteau Lio Kai managed to get to windward and just slightly overlapped, limiting Full Moon’s ability to maneuver. Yells of “starboard!” yielded a slow reaction from port tack boats near the Committee Boat, a J22 tacking directly in front of Full Moon. A quick luff to starboard barely saved a rear-end collision but made for extremely close quarters with Lio Kai, Full Moon still a bit ahead but within inches to leeward. Fortunately, Full Moon was able to slowly claw ahead, and Lio Kai fell off to leeward, her bow nearly clipping Full Moon’s outboard!

Lucienne with Leo Kai just to windward during the start.

Shifty light wind near the Gasworks buoy led to some extra tacks and allowed some bigger boats to get by, dropping Full Moon from fourth to eighth place. Full Moon returned the favor with a few boats on the leg to the Aurora buoy but also fell behind a J22 with the final tack to the buoy, rounding in seventh place.

Robert focused on what's ahead.

As with last week, Full Moon was set up with a starboard spinnaker pole but the wind was out of the north instead of the more typical northwest. Consequently, Full Moon carried on a port gybe with the genoa for a while until able to gybe back and hoist the Equalizer. This allowed the J22 to gain a bit more and for the CF27 Gift Horse to remain ahead as well. However, Full Moon slowly gained downwind, eventually passing both the J22 and Gift Horse to move into fifth place. A conservative early drop allowed the two boats to catch up but not pass at the AGC buoy. Meanwhile, relatively large Solara was having spinnaker take-down issues, dropping them back.

John enjoys driving upwind.

Gift Horse tacked west for potentially stronger wind in the middle of the lake while Full Moon sailed straight for the finish line. Solara eventually got going and was faster but would need to tack to cross the finish line. In the end, Gift Horse crossed ahead by about 15 feet but Full Moon beat Solara to take fifth.

Daniel returns from the foredeck.