Duck Cup and the SC20
Posted: June 9th, 2014, 7:44 pm
Mac, any news on the Duck Cup and the maiden voyage of the 'new' SC20?
Mac couldn't make it, but I did on the 15.
The weather was great and sailing was...well, it had it's moments. Saturday was a distance race through the narrows in the sound down to the lighthouse and back. I managed to hit every patch of grass on the way, but so did everyone else. The wind was supposed to be blowing 5, but picked up to 12-15 when we got out of the narrows. It made for some fun trapping, but it really stinks when you are trapped out and your rudders pop up. Coming back was down wind, but rounding the island and heading back to the finish was a SCREAMING reach. I was trapped off the back of the boat, wild thinging the 15 and holding on for dear life. I have never gone that fast in that boat! I was the first small boat to finish, and took second the first day, a Hobie 16 corrected over me. He was over 11 minutes behind me in a 4 hour race???
Sunday was supposed to be a quick day, beam reach out to the bridge and back, but the wind clocked around and made it s miserable beat to the bridge. We must have tacked 30 times and thought we would never get there. I was in the group of faster boats who got a good start and built a good lead. The rest of the pack was so far back we couldn't tell boats apart. Of course, in a distance race, the weather is different at each end of the course, so we all sailed into a hole and the slower boats caught up. There were about 8 boats including a Weta that rounded the mark at the same time, the Tornado and Nacra 5.7 were very far ahead. The wind was about nothing so it was a miserable downwind run with everyone jibing to get to the patches of wind. I got lucky and stayed to the inside (NC side) of the sound because I heard the wind was going to shift and a seabreeze would fill in. And boy, did it. We went from drifting to another all out screaming reach back to the finish. The other boats around me went to the other side and had to beat back up to the finish, but were flying. I ended up beating that pack by anout 10 minutes, which wasn't enough to move up in rank. The 5.7 KILLED it and ended up moving up from 5th or 6th to second and I got third. The Double-up Hobie 16 (actually 2.5 up since the crew was pregnant) won it over all. The race committee used cumulative corrected time over the two days to score over all.
The Supercat did very well, the venue was GREAT, camping was great.. Can't say enough about how great the weekend was!!
