First Place in Fleet

Storms last weekend led to the Boston Harbor Alliance Regatta being rescheduled until Sunday October 11^th. 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.