The light breeze was a challenge for our crew to keep the Woodwind II moving. Our guests were a private charter from a fairly large corporation and they were happy to be on the water and socialize. Ahead of us, Woodwind ghosted on a parallel course. The proximity of the vessels invited the leader of their group, Chris, who had the helm, to start asking questions about overtaking our sister-ship. How easy it is to go from cruise mentality to race mentality. I guess that is why we call our vessels “yacht” the Dutch word for pursue. We did not pass them, but it was fascinating watching the mind shift amongst some of our guests.
Our next cruise was the Wednesday night race and we were all intent on a win. I was careful to have my start timed to have the best position. When the committee boat sounded the gun a minute early, both boats and crew had our sanity tested. We stuck to our plan and went from a reach to close hauled as my watch sounded the alarm. A small lead was gained and held after the first tack. We slowly settled in and finally put our competitor in our dirty air. From there it was the difficult process of maintaining concentration to give us and our enthusiastic guests a win. A look around at over a hundred boats with their colorful spinnakers in the sunset, was memorable.