A beautiful evening for a sail

CREW

Pam, Kathleen, Nansi - Fore Deck

Jay, Steve - Genoa Winches

Susan - Main Sheet & Timing

Ron - Steering

WEATHER

It was a beautiful evening for a sail. A 10 to 12 knot wind out of the east.

COURSE

Windward/Leeward 4x around

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RACE

We went with the heavy #1. A good call.

Our competition was Blue Streak, Abracadabra, Amelia, and Veloce. 

We got a good start about 3/4 way down the line in clear air heading to the city. Only Amelia was to leeward. We tacked over on to port and Amelia tacked too but was behind. We carried on to the lay line and tacked for the mark not too far behind BS and Abra but ahead of Amelia and Veloce. We gybed the main for the run and poled out the genoa on the port side. The breeze was nice going down wind, plenty strong enough to fill the big jib. And that was pretty well the pattern for the rest of the race except the next three bucks were all the way into the Island on port tack before tacking on to starboard at the lay line.  But we slowly increased our lead on Veloce and Amelia as BS disappeared from sight and Abra stayed ahead but not as far. Graham finished us at the 4th up wind leg. 

We did have an incident with the topping lift getting wrapped around the upper spreader going onto the 3rd buck which required some surgery to rectify. But no harm done.

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RESULTS

Amelia got the jug. We couldn't have missed it by very much. 

We had a very good race. The crew work was flawless, each tack perfect and the pole work superb. But Blue Streak won. Beat us on corrected time by an amazing 1 minute 50 seconds. That's discouraging. But we got the 2nd with Amelia 3rd, Veloce 4th, and Abra 5th. 

So after 4 races with one drop race and despite missing a race, Circe (5th, 1st, 2nd) is in 3rd for the series just one point behind Amelia (2nd, 2nd, 3rd), but well behind Blue Streak (1st, 1st, 1st). 

But it was truly a beautiful evening for a sailboat race. And Jay set up his camera on the stern pulpit and got some shots of the race though the wide angle lens sure makes the sails look small.

Well Done Circe Crew!

Skipper Ron