Photo credit: Spencer KennardThe race is Memorial Day Weekend. The idea is to race over to Nantucket from Hyannis, roam around ashore, shop, eat, talk with competitors then have a lay day and race home Monday. The event is in its 46th year and attracts 200 sailboats that race PHRF Pursuit style.
A fun treat was getting home and finding a picture of Averisera in the banner of the Sunday Cape Cod Times. We bought up a couple copies.
Links to the race and scoring site:
https://yachtscoring.com/event_results_detail.cfm?Race_Number=1&eID=4143
Friday evening, Norm, Tom, and Elizabeth drove to the Hyannis Yacht Club for the skipper's party and final instruction, SWAG Bag, and starting time sheets. Nice party, not too expensive.
We think "swag" means "stuff we all get." Could be true. The SWAG bag had some nice stuff and since it was a cooler bag we used it for that purpose.
During the race we were pretty busy and didn't get many pictures. There is one picture that is important. We learned that when there is a flaky Westerly and the big long, low cloud is in the East, go East. That's where the wind is. Now we know.
The race report is about light air on the rhumb line. Boats that went East early made out. Hmm, boats that got off the line before 1025 made out too. After that, a no wind zone opened up about a mile down the track and piled up the fleet. Averisera made good time through that hole and the next two. We finished fourth in Division D. The top boat in our division beat us by about a half hour or more. Moving vs not moving. We beat the next boat in our division by about 15 minutes. Overall, we were 64th out of 138 starters. The first boat to finish our course was the first place finisher in class D. We'll do better next year.
Waiting for the launch at Hyannis YC. Next year: arrive earlier. Oh, yeah... parking is $20/day
Boat sailing South on starboard. Big black cloud is bringing a brisk Easterly. We didn't get trapped by the 180 degree shift just wish we'd been sailing in it for an hour instead of loafing along the rhumb line.
It was chilly. Zachary and Tabitha are such good sports for being all-important rail weight. There is a serious advantage to having weight in the right place. Zach and Half-Zach did it right and with a smile.
In preparation for the race, we studied the navigation charts, wind charts and forecasts. Navigation was spot on. Of course we were familiar with the currents in the Sound. The challenge for us was about the wind. Would it fill in from the SW the way it does almost every day? Or, would the Easterly prevail as weakly forecast? We are loath to bet against a SWer and stayed on the rhumb line. Oh, well.
On the very helpful side, the renovations paid off. The bottom is smooth and fair. On deck and below the gear works as intended. Finally, we got to use our newish inventory of Pope Sails. The new kite was a huge asset. We had only had it out of the bag once before and that was four years ago. Thanks, Doug.
Tom Brown steered. Elizabeth did navigation and crew management. Z & T trimmed the boat. Norm trimmed sails.
Our crew still smiling at the finish:
Congratulations to Expedient, Toujours, and Wizard for their finishes ahead of Averisera.
We hung on a mooring overnight rather than deal with the shore activity associated with a dockside space. The mooring is fine and reasonably priced. The moored boats are serviced by a launch company, Waypoint Marine Service, LLC, which is run by a friend from our Boston days, Tim. It was nice to see Tim again and get the inside scoop on things.
