Elliot Bay Beer Can – June 13, 2013

It was a beautiful evening on Thursday June 13th for our first Beer Can race of 2013.  We had Shawn at the helm, Nick and Hannah trimming, Pete in the pit and Jason on the foredeck.  We sized up the start and had 7 kts on our port beam heading downtown.  We started with the #1 and Shawn had us across the line with the leaders.  We quickly launched the chute on a beam reach and headed for the first mark.  MB was holding her own against faster boats, most of whom were flying asymmetrical spinnakers.  We rounded the first mark and headed more downwind, which favored our traditional spinnaker since we could lay the line to the second mark, while the others had to veer off to keep their chutes full.  This allowed us to sneak in front of the pack (except for the really fast boats).  As we approached the second mark we hoisted the #1 and struck the chute with minimal drama.  We rounded the second mark and headed to weather with the big #1 powering us along at 6.0 to 6.5 kts.  MB pointed high and we had great separation from the fleet, and focused on the four boats ahead of us.  We were able to hold off everyone except Bonnie Jean (a Beneateau 44.7 with a PHRF of 39), which slowly reeled us back in on the long upwind leg.  They rounded the windward mark just ahead of us and we all had a tight reach to the finish.  Monkeybones placed sixth overall out of 25 boats in the racing class.  All of the boats ahead of us had PHRF’s significantly better than ours, which means we could have potentially gained a few more places on adjusted time.  However, that’s not done on the Elliot Bay beer can races, which is more about fun than die hard racing. 

Once across the line we cracked beers and settled into a booze cruise.  We circled downwind across the course and tacked back upwind to join the cruising fleet for a little fun.  We joined the middle of the pack of 35 or so cruising boats, which gives you a great feel for how fast MB can be.  The highlight of the night came as we charged into the upwind mark (for the second time), which was crowded by four cruisers.  MB was doing at least 6 kts  on a starboard tack compared to the other boats plodding along at 3-4 kts, many of them on a port tack to round the mark.  Shawn came in hot and fast amongst the group of boats and beautifully spun MB around the mark between two boats.  We had at least 30 spectators on the other boats who seemed convinced we were going to t-bone someone.  Only after this maneuver did we realize that the boat most intimidated by our move was Tsunami, our dock mate!  Our crew quickly threw the sails across and MB lost little momentum, accelerating out of the turn and away from traffic.

After this little fun we headed into the dock and chilled on the boat late into the evening attempting to drain our cooler, which seems to have accumulated a lot of beer over the last several races.  We look forward to more crew to help in that endeavor…!