A Long Day

Yesterday began at 4:30AM with a wake-up call from the rarely-set alarm on my TV. My planned time to leave for Olympia was 6AM, which came so quickly (time flew with breakfast, walking Farley, final packing of my sailing gear, etc.) that I didn't even have time for a shower. I was supposed to be in Gig Harbor at 7AM to rendezvous with a couple of crew members with whom I'd carpool to Olympia. But because I was running a bit late, I didn't check the map before leaving and I assumed I'd find my way to Gig Harbor. I'd been there several times before by boat, and I knew it was west of Tacoma, and I knew how to get to Tacoma by car, so I'd be OK. Too many assumptions too early in the morning, I guess. I got off at the main Tacoma exit, and ended up winding my way through the city before asking for directions and finally getting on the right track. In the end, I wasn't too late, and was able to hook up with Jim and Kathleen for the rest of the trip to Olympia.

Once we got down to Olympia, we parked and headed down to the dock to meet up with our skipper Dan and the rest of the crew on Great White, a J35. I had raced before with Dan when he was our "consultant" on Surt during last year's Race Week. He's a good guy and a knowledgeable skipper and racer, and I was glad to have the opportunity to race with him on his boat in the annual Toliva Shoal race.

The forecast from the day before included rain, but had 10-15kt winds. A good day for racing, I hoped. But as usual, the weather forecast was at least 50% wrong, and wrong on the wrong 50%. The front had stalled, so we had rain, but no wind. Not such a good day for racing. The start was delayed by a couple of hours, and we thought for a while it might be called off, but the winds came up a little and we finally did take off on a slow start. The full race is a long race (36.8 nautical miles), and we hoped that the winds would pick up. They never really did, but we had a race, albeit a shortened one, anyway.

In spite of the lack of wind, the race was a good one for me. On Surt, I am usually working the foredeck, rarely venturing to the back half of the boat. On this race, Jim handled the foredeck mostly on his own, and I worked in the back trimming the jib upwind, and trimming the spinnaker when running downwind or reaching. That was all new to me. Other less exciting firsts included sailing backwards when our forward progress was less than the current pushing us backwards. It was interesting to watch the current in action. There were times when we were stalled and other boats were running past us in a river of current less than 100' away. But in the end, everyone got stalled one way or another. At one point, we were seriously considering digging out the anchor to stop us from sliding backwards like some of our competition did.

In the end, the race was shortened by about half, and we had our greatest excitement when a competitor's boat rightfully claimed overlap at finishing buoy and pushed us off the line, beating us across the by seconds. We ended up third in our class, not too bad at all. We continued on to Gig Harbor where I had left my car 14 hours before. I drove three of the crew back to Olympia where they picked up their car. (If the race had gone it's full length, we would have ended up back in Olympia, and Jim would have driven me back to my car in Gig Harbor).

It was a long day, but it was a good day. Thanks to Dan for the opportunity, and thanks to Kathleen, Peggy and Jim for being such a good crew to sail with. I'll do it again in a heartbeat.