Friday night racing was a bust only one boat finished in our class everyone else retired as there was no wind to speak of. 

On Saturday we did the Delta Ditch Run to Stockton it was a long race as we didn’t see any wind over 15 knots and mostly it was sub 10knots.  Check out some pictures below. Wayne did a great job of wing on winging with the asym down the last part of the river after a total of 72 gybes we finally finished! Every one guessed the number of gybes and the winner got to deliver the boat home! I guessed 75, Wayne 60, Delphine 100, Gus 110, Andy 99 and Rene 87.

We went aground while I was helming and managed to get off, were fouled by a J105 and well and truely got our ass kicked by the Moore 24’s and the rest of the boats in our class however we had a great time. The overnight delivery home was long 12 hour motoring and we ended up kedging off a shoal on the enterance to the harbour as we had a minus tide and even though we were in the channel there was some local knowledge we now know about!

On Friday I spent the day derigging a Santana 22 that my friend James just bought. The boat needs re rigging so we are bartering website work and rigging – pretty fair exchange. We cobbled together a set up that allowed us to drop the rig without a pivoting mast step – the boat is in the water and there isn’t a hoist at the marina to take the mast down the standard way. James had a clever idea to rig up a safety line from one bollard to another behind the boat so that when the rig accelerated down it would rest on that line. I would never have attempted this manouvere on a customers boat but it worked!

 Friday night we went racing Daniel didn’t come. We got stuck in the cove in no wind (for the first time in many years!) like we have seen many people do in the past and smugly we sailed around them. We were just behind Good and Plenty and tacked about 50 feet below their line as I saw the big boats coming up (we are in the same class as 40+ footers) and didn’t want to be in their lee. Well that was the end of that – two minutes into the race our fate was sealed and we sat in the confused air and no wind waiting to be put out of our misery. The crew decided drinking beers was the way to go and as I am a Perrin that doesn’t allow retiring when I am skipper we continued finishing last place a good 25 minutes behind first. However, James did get to fly the spinnaker which was good practice for him as he hasn’t done that much before and Delphine got her first sail in after coming back from India.

On Saturday Daniel and I did a doublehanded around the bay race. I helmed for the start and then decided the helm felt odd as it was loading one way than the other and the boat was sluggish so as I wasn’t enjoying it I handed it off to Daniel and crewed for the rest of the day. The kite went up and down a few times and we had a great run from Blackhaller to Southampton Shoals. We were short tacking up the city front with two other moores and were doing OK.  We passed them at Blackhaller as we had done a weather take down at Blossom so we just did a bear away set where as they had to do a gybe set. The downwind leg was a blast we were going pretty fast as their were some good gusts coming through. At one point Sunshine the other Moore was coming at us on starboard so we just gybed the main and Daniel did a great job helming with the pole on the same side as the boom until we cleared them and then gybed back inside of them aimed at Southampton. At Southampton we rounded a boat length behind Sunshine with JR the other Moore 3 boat lengths behind us. We had to let Sunshine in as they were on starboard coming into the mark and we were also worried with the antics of a cruising boat below us – we gave them a wide berth.

We lost an incredible 6 minutes to Sunshine on the beat up through Racoon Straits. I think it is down to rig tune and weight on the rail. We were giving them about 50lbs. Oh well. So Sunshine ended up 2nd corrected, JR 3rd and us 6th in class and 12th overall out of 77 boats that were entered. It was good having our own little match race going on with the other Moores and it was fun to out perform on boat handling but we are lacking in boat speed… now we need to fix that.

On Sunday I went with Gus and Delphine to the Mountain Play – The Wizard of Oz. It was a great event as usual. Maybe next year Henry will be old enough to go up there. It is fun to hike up to the amphitheatre and eat a picnic. As usual they had a fun added bonus – the dog playing Toto was cute and they had a plane fly overhead with a message from the evil witch to Dorothy.

Hope you had a great weekend.