Trifecta

Just completed a great sailing trifecta -- sailing ISHTAR three straight days, with a day off today, Wednesday, prior to our next race tomorrow.

SUNDAY 7/13: An absolutely beautiful, sunny summer Sunday in Seattle, with wonderful steady northerly winds from 10-15 knots inspired this leisurely pleasure sail with Anh and Ed -- Anh sailing for the first time ever and Ed for the second. They made a great crew and were pleasantly surprised with the experience -- a peaceful sail around Elliot Bay with just the main sail, a swing by Alki and a return home to the marina. Wine and cheese and sunshine -- nice to be on the water.

MONDAY 7/14: With an injured left calf muscle my usual Monday night soccer match wasn't an option, and with Graeme out of town on business, the normal Monday night crew needed a captain, so ducking out early from work I managed to meet Scott and Brad at Shilshole Marina for the 2nd race in the 2nd Monday night Ballard cup series.

An absolutely beautiful, sunny summer Monday evening in Seattle, with wonderful steady northerly winds from 10-15 knots, Scott and Brad were kind enough to pick ISHTAR up at her Elliot Bay berth and bring her around the point for the race, and we had plenty of time to prepare for the start. Unfortunately, we couldn't quite figure out which start was ours, and ended up conducting a bit of 'starting practice' essentially crossing the starting line three times for different horns before finally just going for it.
The first leg of the race took us upwind to the north for a short two-tack leg to the first buoy, which we rounded well and set spinnaker for a long leg to the southern buoy. We performed well on this leg, actually taking a few boats 'from behind' as is our MO, with Scott handily manning the spinnaker sheet and pushing out an attack from the rear from a quicker vessel. The second buoy rounding, however, proved our downfall as we were unable to get the jib fully set and the spinnaker down for the return upwind leg until well after we had rounded the buoy and most of the fleet had passed us by -- spinnaker top refused to come down -- a bit touchy. Upon getting her to cooperate, and the jib fully set, the wind promptly quit on us and left us drifting among the rest of the race fleet. After fending off a fellow racer a couple times as we drifted alongside them, somehow we drifted backward as the rest of the fleet seemed to find a forward drift (damn seaweed on the bottom hull), a few boats began to start their motors as the race committee boat packed it in for the race before most boats could finish. ah well, summer racing. We, along with all the other boats in our class, received a DNC/DNF sans one, who actually finished and took the prize.
With a little trouble starting the motor following the race, we decided guest moorage at Shilshole and the proximity of our yacht club was our best option. We took comfort in our beers and fried fish at the Sloop as we reviewed the race results, and discussed the American penal (criminal - get your mind out of the gutter) system.

TUESDAY 7/15: An absolutely beautiful, sunny summer Tuesday evening in Seattle, with wonderful steady northerly winds from 15-20 knots (is this starting to sound familiar? I love Seattle in the summertime!) provided perfect conditions for a return sail of ISHTAR from her guest moorage at Shilshole back to her home berth in Elliot Bay. Another novice crew joined me for the summer sail -- Aaron, Brian (first time on a sailboat) and Ed (now a seasoned veteran of the ISHTAR). With such amazing weather and wind conditions, we literally only needed to make one tack to complete the return voyage -- sailing on a starboard tack from Shilshole out to the middle of the channel toward bainbridge, and then making our one tack to sail all the way back into Elliot Bay to the marina on a port tack. Absolutely wonderful. The only thing that may have made it better was if we actually had set the spinnaker -- being a truely novice crew -- I decided it was better to just set the jib sail and use it in a spinnaker-like fashion, then risk attempting the dreaded spinnaker pole and set, which a much more seasoned crew had enough difficutly with the previous night, the thought of complete novices setting that sail in 20 knot winds seemed a bit aggressive. The jib and main performed admirably downwind -- keeping the boat at steady speed over water between 5-6 knots the entire way -- wonderful sail with the almost full moon rising above the pink slopes of mt rainier in the light of the setting sun, topped off with a few session beers, pbr and the obligatory fried fish feed at the Sloop. Well done.

Engine performed well throughout -- so the difficult Graeme and crew experienced last week was hopefully a one-time event.