Storms last weekend led to the Boston Harbor Alliance
Regatta being rescheduled until Sunday October 11th. We had our
first crew of 7 and it turned out that we needed everyone to tame our sailing
beast in the high winds. As we approached the start line winds were blowing
around 20kts which we considered to be good for us with a heavy cruising boat.
The race being a pursuit required good timing, we were a little late to the
start line but overall it wasn’t bad. We headed on a beam reach to the Nubbles,
passing two boats on the way. Then down the Nubbles and turned to starboard and
tacked towards Long Island bridge. As we rounded red buoy#6 by the bridge we
started contemplating using the spinnaker. We were close to the edge, but
needed to catch yet more boats. At this point we had passed all boats that
started ahead of us except for two that we could see in the distance.
As we approached Red buoy #2P near Peddocks island we
decided to deploy the spinnaker. With 7 on board she went up flawlessly, and
quickly. Many jobs to be completed, attach the halyard, pull the halyard from
the mast, take up the slack in the cockpit, furl in the genoa, switch genoa for
spinnaker sheets (we have only one set of winches), raise the spinnaker
“condom”, and trim the sail.
We set course for green/red near Hospital Shoal then a
little more to port for green #7 daymark at the tip of Gallops. On this long
reach we were chasing down Atalanta, a Sabre ketch who had started six minutes
earlier than us. As we were approaching #7 we were able to block her wind and
cut inside between the day mark and Atalanta. We then turned to head up The
Narrows, with the spinnaker sailing 60 degrees off the apparent wind. We were
flying!! However, we couldn’t come more into the wind so we quickly dropped the
spinnaker and got out the genoa. Again the crew were fantastic. Joe and Morgan
on the deck were getting wet, but wrestled the spinnaker into the bag.
We sailed close hauled back towards Spectacle island still
with Atalanta behind us and chasing one more boat. We had to tack across 100yds
to finish. It was a great sail. Nobody passed us, and we passed other boats.
That was a novel feeling. Atalanta beat us the last time we raced together at
Marblehead, but not today.
We continued to sail on home, opening beers on the way and
feeling pretty good about our performance but not certain of our position.
After cleaning the boat and having some snacks we retired to
the bar “Ironsides” to wait for the results to be posted. We watched the
Patriots. Ordered Dark n Stormies followed by IPA. This morning it feels like
we may have ordered to many. Then the results finally came in. We ordered more.
We came first in our fleet (3 raced, 4 no shows), and second overall across all
fleets that sailed the same course (16 boats).
A great way to end the season.
