[Rhodes22-list] Saturday at the races

Steve Alm salm at mn.rr.com
Sun Feb 8 22:37:41 EST 2004


Atta boy, Wally!  You do us proud!

Slim

On 2/8/04 1:22 PM, "Wally Buck" <tnrhodey at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Warning shameless bragging below Š.
> 
> 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 skipper¹s meeting but everyone voted to go out.
> 
> We had 4 boats in the ³A² Fleet (J33, Hunter 34, O¹Day 28, and a  Seaward
> 23. The ³B² 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 don¹t 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 guy¹s
> 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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