Sea Puppy still has her mast down so I went out with Patty on Pirate Girl her Beneteau 323. I was a fairly stiff day with winds between 18 to 22 knots and seas running between 4 and 6 feet. We reefed both the main and the jib to about 1/2 to 2/3 normal sail area and pirate girl just flew. It was just Patty, Mirriam and Me on the boat so we were all kept busy with tacking around the course but it was definately easier than WeBeJamming which is about the same size but lacks the self tailing winches and furling main and jib.
We had a very bad start.. we didn’t even cross the start line till about 4 minutes after the official start. With just Patty and me having much experience on the boat and Mirrian being new to crewing on a sailboat.. and also this being so far the strongest conditions Patty has had Pirate Girl out in we decided that trying to get in the crush of other boats that were starting might not be the best idea. We hung back from the start line but didn’t judge it right. To get to the start line we had to put two tacks in before we could cross.. Once across the line though we picked up and started to move.. During the race we hit steady speeds to windward of 5.5 knots and on a reach of 6.5 to 7 knots.
Somewhat to our suprise we actually took line honors for the cruising division. Going from last boat to start to line honors was pretty cool. One thing that was noteworthy though was Kathy Lynn.. a boat in our division i beleive that sail the race under jib alone. They were just amazing. We barely passed them with jib and main. (we were heavily reefed though and they had what looked like a 135 up.) they even gave us a bit of a battle to pass them on the first reaching leg of the course. We tried to edge up over them to stay out of their bad wind and they kept us locked out.. Finally in frustration I did the wrong thing and dropped down below them and was actually able to pass through their wind shadow… everytime we would get a strong gust we would edge ahead a little till we finally got ahead of their wind shadow.. then we slowly but steadily pulled away from them.
Here are a couple pictures taken by richard on the race committe boat of us under sail
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