Crash Course

Boats seemed determined to collide for the Pride Night Duck Dodge. Full Moon crew Michael “Rope Burn” Medina, Marcelle “Gimpy” VanHouten, Anne “Ready” Gustafson, Daniel “Jib Sheet” Mengedoht and skipper John “Old Man” Mengedoht worked hard to avoid two boats bashing right at the start, zipping right by the Committee Boat. There were other collisions reported and many near-misses in the prestart.

Full Moon (right) passes the Dragon and Makima.

Sommerfugl (Dragon) was ahead and to leeward (the “lee bow” position) and hampered speed for a while but Full Moon was able to point high and eventually manage to lay the Freeway buoy without tacking, rounding the buoy in first place. Heading for Gasworks usually pays off but not this time as Mouse (J30) and SYC 4 (J22) crossed tacks ahead on the beat to the Aurora buoy. Worse, Sommerfugl and Makima (Thunderbird) managed to get past on final approach to the buoy.

Daniel steps on the boom to reach the top of the duck stickers collection.

The Equalizer was then launched for the long reach southward with Full Moon passing and pulling away from Makima and Sommerfugl while gaining substantially on SYC 4. With decent wind, speeds over 7 knots were observed, Full Moon trying to surf! A tidy drop and clean rounding brought Full Moon onto the final upwind leg, unable to gain on SYC 4 but handily holding off the others to score the Bronze Duck for 3^rd!