Early mornin’ tomorrow!

We got to the Yacht Club (STYC or just YC) on time. Captain Carl said, “On the dock at 8 am!” So we were there at 7:45 and Carsten (aka Pookie) was waiting for us.

We waited for Carl. (There’s a good reason his boat is called “Cruzan Time”!) The YC tender, carrying crew to their boats was waiting for us to decide whether we’d head out to the boat or wait for our captain. After 20-30 minutes, we went with the YC and got the boat ready for the arrival of our captain. He arrived in his own dinghy and the guys prepared the decks while I filled the coolers with ice, beverages and various food items.

We left the mooring in decent time, but got to the starting line well behind most of the other boats. This was a good strategy on the part of our Captain, since there was a collision at the line involving two boats, one of which was in our class (our class was “spinnaker” class). Another boat in our class false started but did not know it since they did not have their radio on (or they just weren’t listening). So they kept on going. We rounded the starting buoy neither too early nor in the midst of the 15 boat confusion, so had an easy start on our way east to Point Udall. Carl was hoping it would only take us 2 hours to round the point, and with the excellent sailing abilities of him and our crew, we made it!

Now, for the easy, down wind phase of the race…. We can crack open some beers, have a sandwich, reapply our sunscreen, and watch the island slip peacefully by to our north.

But the pirates began to approach. They were gaining on us. And they even overtook us! They owed us lots of time because of our handicap in the race, so we didn’t knock ourselves out pursuing them until an oil tanker decided to finally start moving toward the refinery just as we were coming into their water.

The tanker had been sitting there forever. Until it was our turn to pass in front of it. The huge horn blasted twice or three times and we were forced to abruptly change course to avoid being demolished by this behemoth!

I had gone below to use the head and Carl told me to stay there and hold tight to whatever I could while the guys maneuvered Cruzan Time to avoid becoming flotsam.

We lost a lot of time because of that and democratically decided to attempt raising the spinnaker (even though Marvella, the spinnaker babe decided to abstain from this entire endeavor). Carl let Carsten (who has lots of sailing, but not sailboat racing experience) steer while he went to foredeck to wrestle with the spinnaker pole and sail.

Michael and I were at the ready with the sheets and as it went up, something went wrong, and we had to abort. We ended up trying three times and then going back to wing-on-wing with the spinnaker pole holding the jib out. The spinnie was ripped to shreds and would hit the dumpster as soon as we hit land.

Frederiksted is usually a nice calm port, but the wind was whipping and we were heeled well over until after we crossed the finish line at the pier. An exciting day for all!

Tags: St. Croix

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 6:51 pm and is filed under St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.