[Rhodes22-list] Saturday at the races

Wally Buck tnrhodey at hotmail.com
Sun Feb 8 14:22:04 EST 2004


Warning shameless bragging below ….

We had our February races yesterday. After 3 races in January I was in first 
place and I really wanted to do well. The forecast was calling for 20 plus 
with strong gusts. Temps were supposed to stay in the 30s with a 30% chance 
of snow. Saturday morning looked okay so I headed out to the marina. We only 
had 7 boats for the skipper’s meeting but everyone voted to go out.

We had 4 boats in the “A” Fleet (J33, Hunter 34, O’Day 28, and a  Seaward 
23. The “B” Fleet included a C30 (crew of 3), Newport 28 (crew of 2), and 
me. The A fleet usually has crew of 3 or more and the B fleet is single 
handlers or boats with crew that don’t want to fly spinnaker. We usually 
have a bunch more boats in each fleet but the weather kept the sane ones 
home.

Heading out the weather was fine, a nice wind but nothing like the 20 plus 
forecasted. As the actual race count down approached the wind jumped from 10 
–15 to something like 15 – 25. Plenty of white caps now and of course it 
started to snow. I have good gear so I was dry and warm. I started out with 
main lowered and furled and my 125 out all of the way. The boat was balanced 
but twice gusts had me taking water over the rail. I furled the genny in a 
little more and was fine for the long beat upwind. The Catalina 30 soon 
pulled out of the race because they had way too much sail up and the guy’s 
wife and crew were freaking out. You could hear yelling across the water! So 
now we were down to 6 boats.

I had a great start (first over) but the J33 flew by me. Like many J boats 
you sit on the deck. Waves were rolling down the side and they were already 
soaked with crew scampering across the deck. I was nice and dry drinking my 
cup of Joe with the CD-player on. After the Catalina 30 pulled out I only 
had to stay close to the Newport 28. Well the Newport was forced to put a 
reef in soon after the start so I was able to build a huge lead. The snow 
quit and the wind kept blowing. Our windward mark was a big island 3 miles 
down river for a race total of about 8 miles. For the run home I raised the 
boom and let everything out. I hit 7.3 MPH on the GPS. The A fleet finished 
well ahead of me but I finished over 30 minutes ahead of the Newport 28. The 
C30 did not finish so I got First Place in my fleet.

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