Why Are These People Smiling?
Well, why wouldn't we be? When you are on the way home to Discovery Bay after another super day on the water what else can you do but smile?
On Sunday our local yacht club had one of their unique races, an 18 mile team event around several of the local islands; with man-overboard training thrown in for good measure, followed up by one heck of great beach party, and it couldn’t have come off better. We had a sunny day, blue sky, perfect wind, and plenty of beer and BBQ delights.
No, WINGS didn’t win, EPIC, sailed by our friends Neal and Andrea, her son Drew, and John Barnes, took the top trophy, but we got second, along with our team mate Wizard, the other half of team “W”.
And we had wonderful sailing. There were just four of us, sweet Judy (helm), Kiwi’s Andy (forward hand and main trimmer, now there is a combination of jobs!) and Nita, (jib trim, runners, etc) and Captain Fred, (primary grunt). But it was enough to hold off all comers for most all of the day. And the last beat up and around Kau Yi Chau was one to remember: Wings never pointed higher or sailed faster. (Oops, there goes our rating.) We even hit the lay line perfectly (Judy called it) and tacked when an anchored ship hid us from view so our competition didn’t see us go. Hah! Then there was the max hull speed broad reach under kite to the finish. Perfect, what a way to sail your house!
I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t keen on the format; all the entries were formed into two boat teams and each team had to return to the starting area twice during the race and complete a man-overboard drill each time before continuing the race. I thought this was going to be a drag, but I couldn’t have been more wrong: it was fun and educational too. In fact every participant thought it was a great event, and the people on the beach had fun watching the sailboats spinning around like America’s Cup yachts as we tried to get back to pick up our MOB dummies as quick as possible so we could race off towards the next mark.
Of course the 15-18 knots of breeze and flat water didn’t hurt.
After Wings led the fleet back to the finish, we anchored of the beach where our dingy was waiting, packed our eskies and beach chairs to shore and got on with some serious beer drinking and sausage eating. Between mouthfuls and swigs we traded sea stories with the other contestants, or cooled off with a little swim.
When the race committee completed scoring (with a laptop set up on the beach) and prizes were awarded, Judy could hardly carry off all the booty.
Oh, the toilet seat? Well, that was awarded to Captain Fred for the goof up of the day. I left the club’s power dive setup sitting out in Wizard’s cockpit and for a while we thought it had gotten stolen.
Fred & Judy, SV WINGS, Hong Kong
For more photos and other stories check out our blog at http://wingssail.blogspot.com/