THE RACE

It was a gorgeous day. Sunny, hot, with light winds out of the south west, ranging between 3 to 8 knots. The start was out in the lake, followed by a beam reach out to the Gibraltar buoy and back, wing and wing through the gap in a dying breeze, a hardening on around the harbour mark, and a buck to the finish line off the island, near the club.

The fleet was split into two divisions, where the the cut-off between them was a boat length of 34 feet, so, as Circe is 33.9, we sailed with the little boats, starting second. We had an excellent start - first on the line, at the pin end, with clear air, moving at full speed (minus the Skipper's slight chickening out at the line as the seconds counted down, definitely not wanting to be over early in the light winds). Eric from Alpha came up to me afterwards to congratulate us on a great start to watch (he was on Don't Think Twice). But as our start was 10 minutes behind the big boats, most of the race was working to reel in the boats ahead. We got a few of them on the reach back from the buoy, and then continued to gain on Abra, Ascend, and Running Free coming through the gap. After a frustratingly shifty upwind leg to the finish (nothing like being knocked big, then lifted, then knocked again - wait, is this what it's like every Wednesday??), we tacked onto port for the finish just a few boat lengths away...but with another knock, we couldn't lay the line, and had to tack back onto starboard again and shoot the finish. Not exactly elegant, it's true (there may have been a little yelling, hard to say), but it sure got the job done.

Huge congrats and big thanks to the always excellent Circe crew - Kathleen on foredeck, line sighting, and expert Gibraltar buoy finding; Mom covering many roles, on mainsheet, start timing, and jib work too; and Dad, on jib duty, tactical advice, and resisting laying hands on the tiller. Yay!

We won lots of fun swag with our First Place and raffle win. Skipper Ron's accepted North Sails corporate sponsorship, it seems...and note the book we won! Ha

Skipper Susan