Maiden Voyage Continued

We knew the final race would decide our fate, would we come home with the silver or empty handed. Our mast man was told by she who must be obeyed that he was not allowed to play on Sunday, but Bill Jarvis came wandering down the docks looking like he needed a sailing fix, so we picked him up for the final race. I needed to put two boats between me and the Etchells and beat Blueprint to take a second. At the start we timed the line, got a bearing to the mark and checked the wind direction carefully. We got to the line, where we wanted to be, with Blueprint on our stern going full speed and ready to race. We gassed Blueprint and walked away from them, but when they tacked we thought it best to cover them as they were the competition. We stayed pretty close together through the first beat, but after we rounded the mark we just took off and left the field to fight it out for second. The wind was oscillating about 20 degrees every 5 minutes, and we got in sync with the oscillations and tacked on the headers. The big digital compass was great for that. There were only two slight mistakes on the Sunday race, neither of which cost us any noticeable time and it was a great day of racing. We finished almost 3 minutes ahead of the next boat behind us, and corrected almost 2 minutes over Devil Dog! The crew work was spectacular, all of the work that Anthony did on the keel paid off, and the sails were outstanding. Crew for the BEG maiden voyage and race were:

Eddy Parker
Lee King
Paul Lockwood
Doug Lindeman
Anthony
Larry Gupton
Bill Jarvis
Jason Thomas
Polly Thomas

Not being one to brag about how fast my boat is, I will let you infer from the following what you will. Coming back from Oriental to BSC, we had about 19 knots of wind on the beam with the main and number 3 up. Once we came around Minnesott and the wind dropped behind us and down to 13, the boat slowed down to six knots and we felt like we were standing still. Now most of the time, I have noticed that when you run into a pod of dolphin on the river, they like to play on your bow wave. When we turned for BSC at marker 17 and started reaching across the river, we quickly shot back up to well over 8 knots. There we ran into a pod of dolphin, but they were had to settle for playing in the stern wave, and when we last saw them I could have sworn they were panting! For the weekend, the weather was great, the camaraderie was great, the sailing was great, and that silly Alex had the good manners not to rain on our party.

Thanks to you all.

Oriental Dingy Club

Pamlico Sailing Club

Blackbeard Sailing Club