This last weekend I raced on Astra in the CYC midwinters doing bow. There was a large ebb both days with less than 10 knots of wind for the start on saturday. Within .5 mile of the start we were anchored of Point Stewart. Half the fleet decided to leave Angel to port the next mark was Southampton Shoals. Boats that didn’t anchor vainly tried to overcome the growing ebb with less and less wind and it was time to get the fenders out to protect the boat from unwelcome visitors! Finally a wind line worked it’s way down Racoon Straits and we pulled up the anchor which had a fishing net complete with starfish and seaweed attached to the flukes. Guess that’s why it wasn’t holding that well! Off we went working the Marin shoreline tacking back and forth staying in shallow water to get out of the river of tide we looked like heros out in front of the fleet. Then the anchor went down again as we popped out of Raccoon straits and were getting pushed to Treasure.

 

The fleet converged at the red number 10 bouy and there was lots of yelling, mayhem and fiberglass crunching. Astra got through unscathed as the boats behind cleared away to either side allowing the wind to fill the spinnaker while everyone else was blanketing each others spinnakers.

We reentered Racoon heading for the finish with almost 10 knots of breeze unfortunately in one of those last tacks one of the crew badly lacerated his head. While crossing under the boom by the vang his foot caught on the halyard and he head butted the turnbuckle on the new weather side creating two cuts one triangular shaped 1 1/2″ on each side and another straight laceration of 2″ long. There was a large amount of blood and pressure was applied with numerous guaze pads. We put his hat back on so that we could tape the pads to his head without sticking to his hair. He really did put on a brave face. Mary the owner and the crew member spent 3 hours in Marin Emergency room and 7 stitches later he was sent home with some pain killers.

 

Due to some dredging near the enterance to SFYC there is an issue getting the boat into the harbour at the moment. The silting in didn’t even allow us to get to the guest dock on Friday. So we ended up boom riding to heel the boat over as much as possible both Saturday and Sunday to get into the dock after racing.

Sunday was a lot less exciting – just a standard day of racing ! The race was only an hour long as the wind was consistent.