Flying Scot Championship Racing Day 2
In the overall Winnebago adventure clock, this is Day 9.
So today, after the sailing predictions suggested that either there would be a fading Northerly dying and backing into a sea-breeze, or that the sea-breeze would kill the remaining cold front wind, or that it wasn’t nearly as windy off shore as on it. Bull. It was windy all day long.
Windy so that we even had some nice downwind runs today. And we had some holes going upwind. And there were streaks of shifted wind that could open passing lanes for people brave and lucky enough to give them a shot.
The results? Oh, I can explain. We had a rotten first race, and were lucky to end up with only 19 points. A giant cone of confusion must have settled over our mast overnight. Maybe it was the revenge of the lobster Jeff ate. Perhaps we just got, as Steve Davis says, Beflustercated. In any case, we came off the line at the pin-end in traffic and watched in noisy frustration as the right side of the course – the place we just couldn’t get to – had a big old lift in breeze. See yuh! We might have been in the 30s around the top mark. Blah blah blah, broken gooseneck track (BANG! Followed by a chorus of “oh crap, what was that??”) blah blah blah no passing lanes, no pressure, blah blah blah, deleted expletive, finishing downwind in 19th.
Luckily, Mr. Linton is no stranger to fixing problems on a boat without much equipment. That piece of fuzzy line we’d been using to tie up the main at the dock? Perfect for lashing the boom gooseneck to what was left of the track that holds it onto the mast. We watched it dubiously as we got ready for the second start. Then of course we forgot about it. This is racing. Go until it breaks, right?
Second race, we started at the pin, and despite a few moments where it looked questionable, made a one-tack beat of it, bee-lining for the dark sign of breeze along the shore. We rounded the top mark in WHOOHOO fourth place, and then hung on throughout the five legs to finish in fourth.
Andrew Eagan led the whole way, but our own Team Pletsch of Sarasota finished in second that race, edging out Al and Katie at the finish line by the power of starboard tack. Mighty black boat ahoy!
There was some carnage: I saw a couple of trailer-wheels-over-toes (ouch! No blood), plenty of bumps and oopsies at the dock, which is only natural given the ratio of Scot to dock divided by Junior Sailing boat. Watery carnage: at one point I looked upwind to see what looked like bookends in the water way off in the distance: a matched pair of flipped Scots. According to my Challenger-fleet mole, the two bookended boats turned out to be Mark and Maria Brenner, and Sandy and Keith Eustis – and then Sandy got a hand squished between mast and powerboat during retrieval. No hospital visit, so we are hopeful it’s a minor squish. Got a glimpse of it, and ouch: there is blue bruise on his palm AND on top of the hand.
He doesn't need this. Brian Hayes is calling the class upstairs for the annual meeting. I claimed this time to explore the wonders of Blender Bob’s contraption. As I mentioned earlier, this started life as a Thistle. ("Best use of a Thistle EVER," says Capt Winnebago) Powered by a gas two-stroke ("Sounds like your lawn man is bringing you a pina colada," John Aras), that runs half a dozen industrial-strength blenders. RPM control is like on a motorbike: throttle grip action!
On the other side of the contraption is a music center and my all-time-favorite technical device name, the BU 350 by American DJ, which is, of course, an automated bubble blower. It can even blow technicolor bubbles, which leaves my favorite clown joke WIDE open. (Ask me!)
Of course, hanging from a yardarm (All boats should have at least one, right?) is, of course, the piece de resistance: a disco ball. Just add liquid refreshment and you have yourself every excuse for excess and party!
One more race tomorrow -- if the wind doesn't completely crap out, which is what we have been promised. We are expecting it to blow 20.
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