Mr. Standby Travels: Race 1 Twilight Series

Every wednesday night I crew for the racing series out of New Orleans Yacht Club. It's generally the best day of the week for me because I get to sail. Which to me is a bit ironic. Mainly because the majority of the people that come to New Orleans do not equate it with sailing. Much less do they realize that there is a huge lake here or that sailing is open to the public on wednesdays. Everyone seems to think that New Orleans= Mardi Gras 24/7/365......very not true. So if you are in town on the right night do yourself a favor skip the French Quarter and head about 10 minutes north to the other side of the city and come out for a sail, a beer and burger

This race was an interesting one to say the least. The wind had been blowing hard on the lake all day bringing in water from the gulf of mexico and creating waves around 2-3ft high. By the time we had gotten the boat set up and ready to leave the wind dropped down to about 18kts with puffs in excess of 20kts. The boat started to pitch and roll the moment we left the protected harbor and our bow man had a pretty good ride up front. The first start was recalled on account of the race committee loosing their anchor and had to reset. We (except the skipper) were okay with that on Heavy Water since we had been a little bit late to the line. The second start we hit the line in under 10 seconds and headed out to mark with the other spinnaker class boats.

As we trimmed and set the sails, checked our heading, and got relatively comfortable on the rail as the boat cut a 30 degree heel we were totally oblivious to the calamity behind us. Apparently two boats (Footloose Too a J34 and Easterly 4) had a fairly serious collision at the line. The Easterly ran it's bow into the starboard side of the J and caused some very serious damage. I would post pictures and my opinions of the situation but I don't want to accidentally offend either driver or crew. Especially since I sailed with Footloose last week. Let's just say the hole is big and looks expensive. Hopefully someone's race insurance will cover it.

We rounded the mark without much issue but lost our spinnaker halyard while hoisting the sail, rounding the offset mark. Luckily we keep an extra on the deck and after a bit of fumbling on the deck in the dark the boys on the bow straightened us out and we were making trees back down the course. We did however, during the confusion, foul a boat on starboard. Thankfully they knew we had issues and didn't protest us. We'll owe them a beer. Finished the race in 4th place packed up the boat and headed home satisfied and a bit sore from the bumpy ride. All in all any day on the water is good day.