We had a new crew, new spinnaker sheets, new video camera, and yummy Bloody Mary’s.  And we only had one close miss with S-Cape.  I am still not sure where they came from!

The starts were pretty good, but in retrospect, I think we had too much sail up. Once we had ripped the Genny and were forced to put up the Jib, we noticed a SURGE in speed. We stayed in the back of the fleet most of the day, but had a good time!

It was good to be on the water again.

This time the Pics are at  Nathan Eaton’s Flickr Account!

Going...Going...

Our GPS Track…

Chirs from Swale challenged us to another race.  When will that boy learn!  This time; it JoJo, Bryan, Mike, his girl Kay, and I crewing Speedy!  You know the routine…we load her up.  Drag her 5 miles to the north side of the lake.  Race…Kick some ass…and head back home…You want to read the whole story?

Well, we started a bout 30 seconds late.  Although I think Geronimo started about a minute in-front of us, and she carries the same Handicap as we do.  What are we going to do!?  Yell at her to come back?

We tried the same thing that we did the last time, we headed to the west shore, while the entire fleet (except Hotter Tuna) headed toward the east shore.  I think the fleet found some better wind.  After we got on our eastern tack, we noticed how far ahead of us the rest of the fleet was.  JESUS!

We were going to need a miracle.  Between Mike and Bryan, we had it.  They got us back into the running with some tactical tacks and we were back in the swing of it.  WoooHooooo.  Around the mark we were third or fourth, but right behind our friends on Swale.  Our spinnaker pops up, and that would be the last Swale would see the front of our boat.  Now we had to keep up with Tuna, reel in S-Cape and another boat.  We gybed, we did all we could, but the best we could do is scratch out a third.  Still in front of Swale, though.  Maybe I should have let Swale win….after all it was Chris’ birthday………NAH! Better Luck Next Time Birthday Boy!!!

Gone! Eat my Wake Swale!

We took Speedy to Bayview for the Wednesday Night Races.  The crew was running a bit late, so Jojo and I sailed her down there by ourselves.  It was actually very nice and we got into the groove of handling the boat by ourselves quite quickly.

New crew member joined us tonight, Katy.  She works with Bruce and was brave enough to come out and race.  Boy was she in for a fun evening.  Winds were a bit light and coming out of the east. But the excitement was high.

We barely made it to the start, but we started on time and headed for the first mark.  Actually things were right on, Rented Mule rounded first, then Hotter Tuna, S-Cape (Superman’s Cape) was next, followed by us.    We put up the spinnaker and hauled ass toward the leeward mark.  We almost caught up to S-Cape. We dropped the spinnaker and headed back up wind in pursuit of S-Cape!

We set spinnaker again and rounded the mark, and headed down wind, fast.  So fast that we caught up to S-Cape and tried to over take her on the high side.  After all, we were in a groove, and we were down fast.  Scape decided they did not like that, and headed us UP UP And that’s when we went away.  Now on a tight reach, we stole their wind, sped up, and went right in front of their bow.  Score one for the Good Guys.

At the mark, things did not go as smoothly and we lost ground and a position to S-Cape.  We recovered and actually were in the same position behind S-Cape at the windward mark as the last time.  We had another fantastic spinnaker set and started to chase S-Cape down.  This time I was not going to get pushed up, but I was also not going to come as close to pass him.  We chased him down but he got us at the finish by about 6 seconds.  Too bad they give us time!  And too bad that all the shenanigans caused us to waste the precious time we both give to Swale.

Swale corrected over us once again.  They are our Elenore.  Every time we think we got them, they get by us!  Next time I am not playing these reindeer games with S-Cape.  We had fun and proved that we are a boat that can contend. Pictures are from Dan Malek aboard the slippery Orion. Jojo took the rest. http://pics.MySpeedster.info

As an exercise we did rig up the boat and headed out.  We get out there, and there is a breeze.  We get to the start and Woody is calling tactics.  He was right on, we get a great start and squeeze past Giranimo.  We get on a port tack and head towards Terry Point…I am really starting to dig racing in light wind.  There is so much more finesse to handling the helm.  Careful and purposeful movements, the weight shifts on the boat are immediately recognized.

We were headed a little too much toward the middle of the lake.  I was getting worried that we were just separating too much from the rest of the fleet.  Woody made me keep my course.  That was our saving grace.  The Mark was no where near terry point, rather it was closer to the power plant.  We were headed right for it.  We even had some room to head down and get some speed.

About 300 yards to the mark; Woody, who has only known me for a couple of months, made the most  insightful comment ever.  I guess he could either see or feel that I was getting anxious and told me to chill out.  He further commented that we were on track for the first 2/3 of the race and that I need to keep from losing my concentration now.  I was still anxious.  I just wanted to do something.  We had been on the same tack for almost an hour now.

We approached the mark and were about to round it when we noticed that S-Cape and Progh’s Shooting Star were headed toward the damn.  The two Melges rounded the mark and we didn’t think we could catch them by following them.  We stayed on our tack for another couple hundred yards and tacked on the same line as S-Cape and Shooting Star. That was obviously the right decision.  We beat Barking Fish and Devil Dog in.

We got a 7th, not too bad.  I will take that any day competing against these sailors on light wind.

There are some pictures coming soon….