2007 Grand Prix

So the Seattle Yacht Club puts on a three day event in the beginning of Nov called Grand Prix. It is an invitational regatta and you must qualify during the season to attend. We managed to pull a third place finish at Race Week, so we were going to grand prix. It is usually very cold, and it usually blows fairly hard at least one day. That was the case again this year. This would mark the first time that I drove at Grand Prix, but not my first rodeo. The previous boat that I sailed on, Isabeau, managed to win our class three years running, not too shabby. Anyway, we had a tough fleet as always, and had to sail against the fastest boats in our rating band.

Friday usually has one medium distance race to get the blood pumping for the weekend, we saw light winds for this race and had a so so start. It was fun to see the broad spectrum of boats that were in our fleet, a moore 24, a pocket rocket 22, an Olsen 25, a Ranger 26, Santa Cruz 27, and some others. Here is a shot taken right after our start Friday.....

The bad news, was that the wind had other plans and died right before we got to the finish, very frusterating to get so close and watch as the others come from behind, nothing new to us......

So Saturday saw some heavy air, and we were ready, sailing with five, with the help of our buddy Rich. We managed to have two over early starts, putting us in bad position of each upwind leg. The wind built as the day went on and we manged to end up at the weather mark with the big boat fleet bearing down on us. We were on the lay line doing fine, when we were tacked on by a larger boat (I think it was Veloce, but they did apoligize....) so we went into pinch mode, more and more big boats surrounded us, until it was obvious that were were not going to make the mark. At this point in time I tried to tack onto port, but had no room to duck or cross anyone, so we flopped back onto stbd, just to realize that Shoot the Moon, a peterson 40, was also in pinch mode coming up right behind us. I tried to yell, but they had stalled and lost helm, so I sat in horror as I watched a wave lift their bow up, and dropp it right onto our port transom. The impact drove our boat forward rapidly, and I bore off as quickly as I could to clear the scene. They didn't even realize they hit us and kept on racing. By the time shell shock was over, we were way too far to hail them to protest, and I pointed our horse to the stable with a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomache.

We evaluated the damage when we arrived back at the dock, and it was a pretty large impact, about the size of a grapfruit, complete with their red paint. I felt horrible, as it wasn't even my boat! We sat around and watched the rest of the days racing while eating burgers and shakes from the local diner. Once Shoot the Moon arrived back at the dock, Vic and I went to go have a conversation with the owner to sort this all out. They were totally cool about the whole thing and offered to pay for the damage. Winter project is all I could think...... Needless to say, even dispite missing a couple races, we were coming back for more on Sunday since the forecast was for more wind!

Sunday saw a great northerly and a long kite run down past Elliot bay. We had a long slug back upwind and manged to even learn that the lee side of the Ferries have a HUGE wind shadow, that is a funny story....once we climbed out of the water, the wind returned and off we went again, looking around to see if anyone had saw that....we found out later that some people did and had a good laugh. We pulled off a second place finish (missed first by three seconds after racing for 3 hours!!!) and felt like we had redeemed ourselves. I arrived home and was met at the door by my wife, holding a pregnacy test.....we were going to have another little one!! ! That was enough excitment for me for one weekend, and a great ending to a great season for Shenanigans. We finished middle of the pack, but it felt to me like we had won!