It’s shaping up to be a great, great summer: last weekend it was 90 degrees AND windy, something that pretty much never happens in the NorthWest. I’ve posted a set of pictures in the photo gallery.

 

I’ve started dating a woman named Mary (orange bathing suit in the photos) and it’s been great, partially because it isn’t at all what I would have expected. She’s very much a Southern girl with a delightful accent and a set of morals and habits that are almost alien to someone like me. She’s likes bluegrass. She likes antique furniture. She’s wild about animals. On the other hand I’m just crazy about her and her about me. She’s clever, funny, a great sailor, and loves to drink as much as I do. Most importantly, I’m incredibly at ease around her. It’s hard to explain and right now I’m pretty happy with not trying to explain it and just having a nice summer.

I’ve been back from the Swiftsure race for over a week but I’m just getting around to writing about it. In short, it was an AMAZING race.

Friday we were locked in the port, tied up to the other Swiftsure boats, so we just sat around, drank coffee and did little boat projects. It was very relaxing.

Saturday the race started at 10:25AM, an important point to note. The fast boats going all the way to Swiftsure bank in the Pacific Ocean (140 nm) left at 10:05. Super fast boats in our race to Cape Flattery (100 nm) left at 10:15. We left at 10:25 with an okay start. The first thing we noticed is that with the cruising sails up we don’t point as high as some of the boats around us but we do have excellent speed.

A couple hours later we were preparing to round Race Rocks. This was the first time I messed my drawers. Race rocks is a passage between a rocky point and a set of islands. There's a picture at the bottom of this post.

In the picture you can see the current is pushing pretty hard between the shore and the rocks. The trick for rounding the point at the top of the picture is to stay within 20-40 feet of the shore, quick tacking the whole way up the coast. The problem is that 50 or more boats are all trying to do the same thing. Oh, and the boats are of different sizes and different speeds. The guy who hit me, who turns out to work upstairs from me, called it a washing machine. We started working our way up the shore but while on starboard tack we got hit by a port tack boat. Here’s a link showing us just after the accident. You’ll note there are 6 boats within 20 yards of each other in this photo. 

We made it partway up the coast but then lost right of way, fell into the middle of the passage, and were carried back to where we started by the current. This happened to most boats, hence the waching machine metaphor. We started up the coast again, narrowly avoiding collisions, and were forced into the current again. Everyone on Penelope was AMAZING, staying focused and diligent tack after tack after tack. Several boats were getting hit and as the current was building fewer and fewer boats were making it around the mark. After our second failure to round the mark we decided to go around the lighthouse at the bottom of the photo. This is where I messed my drawers again.

Below the lighthouse and outside the frame of the picture there are some hidden rocks. Our goal was to sail between the lighthouse and the rocks. After an hour we were barely creeping up past the lighthouse. Another boat, who had considerable speed managed to come up beside us, between Penelope and the hidden rocks. We shouted over, “Hey, we think there are some rocks underwater 25 yards from us.” “Yeah, sure. Whatever,” was the reply from the boat. They lost all their speed in the current we were trapped in and, in just a second or two, drifted backwards and were pinned against the rocks. We were slowly drifting towards them. We immediately jibed and headed further out into the current to safely round the mark.

In hindsight we should have stayed in the washing machine to round the point. We would have certainly improved our standing in our division, but it seemed toooooo crazy to contemplate at the time.

More later. Nic posted some pictures here and I've copied some of them into the gallery:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=y5pge1q.bw8xyk9e&Uy=jtplgq&Ux=0