Pirate Night

Full Moon has an excellent start. Boats ahead in this photo were over early.

Full Moon crew Randy “Stripes” Olsen, Troy “Grog” Charlesworth, Kaylee “Hand Sani” Charlesworth, Daniel “Knotty” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Graybeard” Mengedoht managed an excellent start for the Pirate Night Duck Dodge after successfully pushing a windward boat up and out of the way. Rival Necessary Evil (Catalina 30) was behind but to windward and soon pulled ahead. (Size sometimes matters…) A few others managed to overtake Full Moon to windward on the first leg. (Something is slowing Full Moon on upwind legs, probably the skipper…)

Kaylee gets into trimming the jib.

The second leg to the Aurora buoy featured a battle with Tailwind (Capri 25), Full Moon coming out ahead via higher pointing and well-timed tacking. After rounding, the Equalizer was soon launched but heading toward the middle of the lake failed to provide the usual advantage. It did allow Full Moon to gain a bit on the leaders and get past or hold off some others. Full Moon delayed dropping the spinnaker to the last second, creating the opportunity to round the AGC buoy just in front of Oh J, a fast J24.

Randy takes a selfie with the pirate crew.

The final leg saw no changes, Full Moon crossing the line in fifth place, not bad for a relatively breezy night. The sun dips down a little too early these days but it was warm, sunny, and great to be out enjoying the lake.