2007 Northsound Event #2

For 2007 WINSA tried to set up a North Sound Series with Milltown sailing, and they wanted to use Round Whidbey, this Milltown event #2 and Foulweather Bluff as the races. We did two out of the three, and performed well in them. We decided to participate and delivered the boat to Everrett on friday afternoon, and had great weather, a nice 15 knot NW, perfect for a kite ride down. Kevin was waiting for us when we arrived and then brought us to the Ferry and in doing so almost managed to kill us all, but that is another story.....on to the race!


We had a fair amount of boats to sail against, three J30 and an etchells 22 to name a few. It was a great sunny day and we had great winds, downshifting to a 3 about 30 minutes into the race. After that, the pressure came down and it turned into a long haul. A few boats manged to get stuck in the mud as we attempted to round the baby island bouy in a negative tide....brilliant. After that it was a long slow kite ride home, during which I think we all decided we should have brought more sun screen. The worst part was when we ran out of Dr. Pepper........

I think we managed to hold onto a second place finish, coming in just behind Bob, the J30.

2007 Windermere

Well I don't think we have any pictures for this race since it was an action packed event. I think we saw mid twenties all day and even saw 30 a few time (app). Anyway, we sailed well for never having had the boat is these conditions, with a reef in the main the the #3 up, and we didn't even hoist on the last downwind leg.

I had obligations to attend to on Sunday, so we missed racing on sunday, but it was a blast to get the boat out in these conditions. We set the current speed record at this event with a #1 up and a reefed main going down wind, 10.2kts.

2007 Round Whidbey

Well, since we were so lucky in 2006 in this race, we decided to enter again and see if we could make it a repeat. We managed to pull off a great start in about 5knots of breeze, hitting the boat right at the gun with no one on top of us. We shot out of the pack and sat in the lead for a short time. As the breeze started to come up, we found ourselves crossing tacks with Skookumchuck and Lissa for a while before they pulled ahead. That is when the wind shut down just south of Keystone. We floated around for awhile and took the time to catch up on eating and capturing great photo ops...........

Once the wind came back up, we started to move again, only to join the rest of the leaders bobbing at Possesion Point, the south end of Whidbey. This is where we found Grins, the Olsen 30, Veloce, the Bene 36.7 and the rest of the pack, Heart of gold, Bob, and Garuda to name a few. As night time fell, it became time to attempt the heavily argured Mulketio ferry crossing of death. I have always been conservitive when dealing with large ships that go very fast in the middle of night, but some of the other crew (Doug and Joe) are a little more brazin when it comes to this type of thing. So against the desires of a few, I came down to give the ferry some room as it entered the pier on the whidbey side. This was the response that I recieved......

Shortly after this, the wind shut down and we drifted for a few hours. The night pretty much sucked, and at that point we just wanted the misery to be over. As dawn came, we realized that we had stayed in the fight the whole night and were nipping on the heels of one of the best sailed boats in Oak Harbor, Veloce. We managed to get lucky again and pulled off another repeat of last year.

2007 Frostbite Series

Our first regatta series was the feb classic frostbite series put on in Oak Harbor by WINSA. We faced off against a few Olsen 30s and a U20. Mostly this is an opportunity to shake the bugs out and prepare for the upcoming season. The weather this year wasn't too bad and we managed to recruite another sailing member, Ben from down south.

While the racing isn't exactly top notch, it gives us an excuse to go out pretend we know what we are doing.

Obviously we take our racing very seriously. I believe the catch phase "Shut up and trim. Winners don't have fun" was coined during this series.

We did a lot of work on the bottom this winter, new bottom paint and we made the keel fixed, so we faired in the opening around the keel with expoxy. This turned out to be a horrible idea, more about that later. I think the power of bob prevailed this year and we took a second place.

2006 Round Whidbey

So our first race on Shenanigans was Round Whidbey in 06'. This race is a non-stop rounding of Whidbey Island, which is the second longest island in the lower 48 I believe. The route is 72 miles, starting just west of Decpetion Pass and ending in the entrance to Oak Harbor. The race was initially run by the Oak Harbor Yacht club, but after their sail fleet broke apart, Whidbey Island Naval Sailing Association (WINSA) was formed and they have been running this event ever since.

The race starts at 9 am sat morning and has a time limit of 27 hours. It can be a fun fast ride, or a gruling grind. Typically, there are multiple re-starts along the way due to wind and current and makes the race very difficult to plan for. Mostly, we just rely on getting lucky and that seems to work well for us.

Shenanigans was sailed with the gear that she came with this year, nothing too fancy, but everything worked great. We brought along our long time friend Doug, who is no stranger to the sailing scence in Oak Harbor since Vic was carrying around our unborn daugther and wasn't feeling that adventurous.

We managed to hold everyone off the entire race and capitilized on great wind and great current, finishing the race at 11 pm sat night. It was a great ride and we never had to gybe! We won first in class and first over all, a great start. The remaining boats did not finish until the next morning.

Introduction

Well I think this is past due, a blog dedicated to us out sailing. I figured we have enough people asking about our adventures, that this would be the most useful way to immortalize us forever and it gives me an exuse to blog.

We all grew up in the Puget Sound and I have been sail boat racing since I was 12. My wife joined the fun about 11 years ago and has been hooked ever since.

One day I decided that I needed to own my own sail boat and I purchased a hotfoot 20, "Feisty Goat" and went racing. The only problem was my wife and I needed crew, so that is where Joey and Kevin entered the picture. After they were both hooked, Joey went out and procured us a B-25 to race to the crap out of. This would allow us to all sail at the same time and compete in some longer distance racing.

The B is a great platform and has provided us with hours of great fun and stories. I won't mention how much money has been thrown at this thing in the name of speed, but we have some good gear and we seem to go faster everytime we sail.

I will attempt to go back and catalog our past races one at at time. So stay tuned for that!

We have been racing her for three years now, so between my two kids and two dogs, that might take a while to get this all put together.