After a 5 minute postponement the wind came up and with Stuart calling tactics we found a decent hole that allowed us to get over to the beach quickly. Not all the boats were so lucky, a couple were over early, and Mark on Summer Light wrapped the barge mooring line hanging off the hamburger buoy around his keel trying to get back to the line.
As we got close to the beach at Golden Gardens we had a brush with a Farr 395 that had rights on us (but wasn't actually in the race). We crossed him, tacked, and when we looked up, we found ourselves in 3rd, right behind our arch rival, Muffin. Drat!
To make matters worse, she was driven by Kevin Swackhamer, the guy who won Whidbey Island Race week, the Grand Prix, and pretty much everything else on Ishtar back when she as called Isabeau. It didn't take long for us to lock horns.
At the windward mark, he rounded a little wide, and I ducked up under him and drove for clean air above him. He wasn't happy about this--at the bar he told me we didn't belong in there. Hmmm... (whatever). It looked to me like he left the door open, and we walked right through it. He also mentioned that he was going to try and take us up all the way to the beach, and the only thing that kept him from doing it was the traffic.
Yep, saved by traffic. By now everyone else in the race was banging towards us on starboard headed up wind, while we were on port headed downwind with our spinnaker up, close reaching between an angry leeward boat and a line of starboard tackers trying to cheat down because their depth alarms were going off if they strayed too high along the beach at Golden Gardens. Everyone had rights on us, and we were stuck. But hey, at least Kevin couldn't force us up any further.
Boats above us were yelling Starboard! The guys on Muffin started yelling about our kite touching their rig, we were yelling at them for room. Finally Kevin drove down and gave us some space. We promptly got the kite full and back and sailed over the top of them. Now they were really angry, and beaten.
We thought hard about doing turns, but in the end we felt he was playing hardball, and if he wanted to play that way, he needed to protest us. He didn't, and we sailed the great circle (breakwater route) allowing us to stay in better wind than most of the fleet.
By the leeward mark had a good lead on most of our competition. Excepting Last Tango, who sailed basically the same route, didn't tangle with their rivals, and had a nice clean race. Next time we'll try that instead. In corrected time, we only ended up losing to them by 3 seconds...a lot of ways we could have gotten those three seconds back, too. Oh well.
The long and the short of it was that we ended up crushing the Muffin, Last Tango won the race, and we were second. Just good enough to secure our spot first overall for the series. Well done Team Ishtar!
I had a beer with the Muffin Boys afterward, and they were actually pretty nice about the whole thing. They said we should have tried to cross the starboard tacking boats. Hmmm, maybe (no!) but when I mentioned that the beach was on the other side, and that I was hesitant to cross a line of boats to park Ishtar on the beach with her kite up, I got the sense that perhaps the whole thing was a bit aggressive for a Monday night. Then we got talking about the NOODS, and before you know it the whole thing was forgotten. At least until next week.
Kevin even volunteered to sail with us and give us some coaching. Guess it pains him to look at our sail shape (his notes: needed to have more leech line on the main, more runner on the jib, and to shift gears by moving the draft back and forth on the main with cunningham. He also says the mainsheet cam slips, and we need to wrap it round the entire block and half hitch it to stop this.)
So after a fun night of racing, we had a great time at the awards ceremony. They gave out a number of trophies and we got our share. The awards included
- Our sticker for second
- our mug for the series win
- 2 engraved plates for Race to the Straits, a 1st in class, and 1st overall in Division 1
- a nice canvas bag to haul our loot home in
A big night for the old girl. Thanks to everybody who helped us win the dinnerware. We go back to work next Monday when the second series starts, and I am springing for new Ishtar hats for those came out to help. Bribery? Maybe (yep!) but something seems to be working...let's keep it up!
Thanks again everybody. I had a great time sailing with you all and hope that we can build some momentum here for more great racing this summer.
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