Monday Night Kick Off on Budd Inlet

Monday Night Kick Off on Budd Inlet

The Budd Inlet Star Fleet Monday evening racing season has officially begun. Andy, who has sailed with me since my first Thistle, stepped up as crew. The wind was near perfect and the sun was present for part of the evening. We didn't collide with anything that wasn't inflatable, we avoided the back of the fleet for most of the races, we learned from our peers. And, most importantly, we didn't drop the mast. A real risk on a Star.

Andy at the helm of 'Rather'. Photo by Dwaine Trumert.

With just  two practice sails under our belt Andy and I joined the fray with 14 other Stars. After just ten minutes of warm up sailing we entered our first three minute sequence. I parked below the committee boat with 70 seconds to go and wondered out loud how the boat would handle sitting nearly in irons. With about 30 seconds left we slowly sheeted in, accelerated 1500 pounds of wood and metal, and hit the line at full speed. Our night was off to a great start. Literally.

I am unable to recall every detail of every race. Instead here are the most important points of the evening from the perspective of 'Rather'.

After a decent first start our next concern was boat speed. We looked good on speed and height against the boats around us. Our chartered woodie 'Rather' can still hunt! It is easy to fall victim to 'pinch mode' on the Star and Andy did a great job reminding me to keep the bow down and the speed up. We also found that easing the leach of the jib one or two inches off the usual setting widened the steering groove. This may have lowered our potential top speed but definitely resulted in a higher average.

In a previous post I mentioned getting comfortable crewing and beginning to experiment with back stay adjustments. The opposite was true from the helm position. Because of my inexperience steering a Star we quickly found that during my backstay adjustments I would look one way and the tiller would go the other. We soon evolved into Andy making every adjustment short of the tiller and mainsheet. And he even helped with the mainsheet through the gybes!

Bring good crew! Andy is always game for a sailing adventure. We have sailed together for years and our trust and experience together allowed us to jump into a new class with less stress. Thanks Andy.

Our whisker pole has stories to tell. It is wooden and was missing its 'Y' fitting when I first discovered it in the bilge of 'Rather'. I fashioned a makeshift 'Y' fitting out of Phenolic and I thought we were in business. On our second practice sail a gust hit while sailing downwind and the pole bent at least two feet out of column before exploding. With less than one week until our first race I glued the poor thing back together with Titebond II and hoped for the best. It worked well until we dropped it overboard during a gybe. A hearty thanks goes out to John and John who fished it out of the bay and returned it between races.

Just like making mistakes will move you backwards regardless of the fleet, making good ones can help. In race #4 we made a good choice. We gybed at the top mark and rode a substantial gust into the lead and over the finish line. We had earned a bullet in our first evening of racing. Yee haw!

The glory was short lived, however. In the last race we started near the pin with just one boat below us. We watched as he legged out just a bit, tacked to cross us and the swarm of boats that was pinning us out to the left. Then the righty came in that solidified our poor position. From the penthouse to the outhouse.

Despite our last race being our worst we felt all warm and fuzzy during the sail back to the dock. And mother nature nurtured the feeling with a wonderful sunset light show that this photographer truly appreciated. Regardless of our finish positions we considered the evening a complete and total success. But for the curious, here is a link to the race results page.

See you next week.