It was blowing the shingles off the roof last Wednesday afternoon before the race, steady 20 knots gusting to 25. The dinghies decided not to risk it so that freed up Adam to join us. Trevor was at a "conference". Pam was still injured. But Jamie brought Jay to sail with us. So that made the crew Audrey, Kathleen, Nansi, Susan, Adam, Jay and me. Guess who got assigned the winches?

But just as we were explaining how things worked to Jay, and just about to back out of the mooring, we got word that the races had been cancelled. Apparently the new committee boat, the Freddie M was out in the Bay setting the course when it was noted that there was an exceedingly great quantity of water in the bilge and the bilge pump wasn't working. So they headed in to deal with that and cancelled the races for the evening.

But we had a full crew eager to go, so we did. It made the jib selection easy, we went with the #3. And a full main. We got whacked with a few gusts over 20 early on but all in all the wind strength had lessened and we could have easily carried the #2. But we were out there just for fun so stayed with the 3. It was your typical NW strong wind out of the City, Shifting rapidly thru 45 degrees and blowing anything between 20 knots and zero. We'd be rail under going 6 plus knots up wind and ahead would be a Shark sitting vertical with sails hanging limp. So it would have been a frustrating race if we had sailed it.

We came back in time to get Kathleen to a book event on Wards with Joseph Boyden and the rest of the crew withdrew to the surprisingly empty great hall to drink beer, yak, and have dinner. And we did sign Jay officially on board Circe.

Welcome aboard Jay.

Skipper Ron