Lady at the Helm Race

Trophy Wife took the helm from wire-to-wire today. In fact she took over at minus 10 minutes to the start.

I relegated myself to chief beer-drinker, photo-taker and rail-meater. It was hard work, believe me. Keeping my mouth shut? Are you kidding? I wanted to see what the unfettered wisdom and judgment of my team would produce in terms of everything from game plan to tactics and sail-trim.

Okay, okay, I opened my mouth sometimes, but I was only askin', not tellin'!

This was a pursuit race in a steady 12 knots building to 17 with flat seas with the tide moderate and down-coast current about 0.2 knots.

What did I learn? People had radical different approaches to the day's conditions than mine:

• Das Boot started on starboard close to the starboard pin where I would have selected port tack on the port end.
• Das Boot went out, tacking up the outside of Kelp Island, where I would have selected the beach route.
• When Das Boot tacked, sheets were eased until speed was regained. That's not for me in two-digit wind: I like to bang 'er over and bow down until that speed gets back up. (I know I'm in a minority here.)
• On the last leg, crew believed the closest end of the line was the windward end.
• One of the reasons old men gravitate toward helming duties as opposed to sail-trim tasks is that they prefer to be assigned to holding on to something stationary with both hands for the duration. I found myself taking refuge in the campanionway., as opposed to either rail where I could at least make myself somewhat useful monitoring tell-tales.

As crew, I botched the spinnaker take-down. Some. Nevertheless, Trophy Wife finished 9th out of 16 boats.

Photo taken from Sirocco (not racing) during the 2nd leg