WNR Race 6: Success!

After a mad-dash from Baltimore to Annapolis, I jumped aboard LinGin at 1743 hrs., much later than we usually head out. We had Tim Peek, Mackenzie, David, Pat (a friend from work) and Pat's son, Zach. It was hot and sticky with a south wind around 8-10 kts. On the way out we saw storms in the distance, but felt they were moving in the right direction (away from us!) and decided to keep heading for the line.

Mackenzie took the helm on the way out and we found the bottom at Greenbury Point. I can't fault her though. First of all, George Washington himself wrote about going aground at Greenbury Point, and second of all our depth meter read 6.6 ft. when we hit. Man, I hate those NavMan instruments...they are junk. All ended well; we were off in no time and steaming toward the line.

I drove for the start and amazingly we we had about 6 minutes to the start when we arrived at the line. Sweet! We put in a tack or two and at the final run to the line were able to keep Harry from barging and Jonathan was far enough down the line that couldn't pinch us out. We had the best start we've had all year. Sweet!

After a good sail up to mark A, I gave David the helm so I could prep the spinnaker. David had sailed a good bit of the way home from St. Michaels the weekend before and I had been impressed with his ability to keep her going upwind. We rounded mark D (we had course A2) with a healthy lead.

As we came downwind, we thought about raising the chute, but it started to rain and the wind picked up considerably. With a good lead, there wasn't and good reason to raise it, so we stuck with white sails. Everyone agreed the Tim Peek's incessant cackling and yelling, "bring it on Mother Nature" while standing on the bow in the rain probably caused the storm to subside prematurely.

David had a good rounding at the red nun, but as we sailed upwind to the green can, his tactician (read me), sailed him into a huge header while Harry split tacks (he tactician didn't tell him to cover) and made up a lot of ground. However, David did a great job of threading the boats in the harbor as well as avoiding the Etchells class and the absentminded boats that had finished motoring willy-nilly through our course.

We took the gun and had a very nice trip back to Mimi's, listening to lots of police officer stories from Mr. Peek.

Looking at the scores this morning, it looks like LinGin edge out Second-2-Nun (Harry) in a tie to win Series 1 of the 2011 WNR. Sweet!