Wednesday Night Races
Cock Island is coming up soon, and I want to be ready for it. I’d rather not be as nervous about getting the boat hurt as I was last year. So I’ve signed up for the Wednesday night races on the York River.
I don’t know how common those are elsewhere. But this area has at least 2 series of this type: one on the York River, and one near the mouth of the bay. They’re fairly short courses, and held each Wednesday night.
We started on the last race of the Spring series. My crew were Dew-Man, Betty, Paul and Grant. We left the dock about 5:30, in what looked like possible storms. We headed towards R-24, the starting point of the race. As we did, there was chatter on the radio, discussions about whether the race should be cancelled. It was decided ‘no’. But the start time was adjusted, and we missed when it was going to be. We were near the start line (which changed once because the wind had shifted), but got off about 3 minutes late, I’m guessing.
Smoothly on our way, but not knowing what the course would be, we followed the other boats. Not hard, since the group that started after us mostly passed us like we were standing still. 😉
We made our first tack. So far so good. Second tack, and the boat spun around. Not sure what I did. Oversteered? Well, took it all the way around and continued on our way, a bit more behind the pack than before. Next tack went smoothly. The one after that, a full 360 degrees. See a pattern here? Yeah, tacks to starboard were not going well. :'(
Made it around the mark after the rest of the fleet, and ran into the dead wind that everyone else had. The storm was looming at that point, so Dew put on his foul weather gear. I turned the helm over to him, donned my own, then started passing out jackets. Rather than heading towards our mark, Dew headed the boat towards the opposite shore, picking up a nice wind. When we tacked after that, we were flying! 7, 8 mph and the boat at bout 30 degrees tilt.
We crossed the finish line in just under 2 hours. Everyone else was gone, so no one got our time, and we were marked as ‘Did Not Finsh’. Too bad I didn’t record our finish time – could have mailed it in. But ah well! It was just a practice anyway!