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

The Skipper