1-23-11: Goosebumps - Jenn

A Saturday in Seattle in the month of January just wouldn't be complete with out a sailing excursion! For six-weeks during the winter there are weekly sailboat races on Lake Union, wonderfully called Goosebumps. One of Ben's friends in the Washington Yacht Club, John, owns a Cal-40 boat named Strider. John wanted to partake in Goosebumps, but needed crew so he sent out an open invitation to the club. Ben, myself and another friend, Andrea answered the call.

Ben and I rushed through wood-fired bagels, coffee at Stumptown, a trip to a music store to pick up a $5 used copy of Time Out by The Dave Brubeck Quartet, and haphazard clothing selection in order to make the 12:00p push time. As we got to the boat, Andrea and John already had the sail cover off and were uncoiling necessary lines. We jumped on and John started motoring us out to Lake Union. I enjoyed honking (long, short) to alert the draw bridges to rise to accommodate our tall mast. We found the committee boat, which officiates the race, anchored in the middle of the lake and received our verbal and visual directions from them. It would be a "10, 5, 1" start we were told and we read the course buoys from a giant placard dangling from their rigging: "AGC, Cove, Freeway, Aurora." From these thin scraps of information we were able to glean that a horn would blow 10 min, 5 min and 1 min before the final horn marking the start of the race. Also, we used the location list to find each of the four course buoys, outlining a giant rectangular course. (Never mind the float planes that use the middle of the lake to land and take off; those on the lake already have right-of-way!)

We sailed around a bit, killing time until the start. There wasn't much wind and what little there was was pretty patchy. We heard the ten-min horn and started making our way to the start line, slowly. Very, very slowly. By the 5-min horn, I was quite certain that we wouldn't make it to the line on time. By the 1-min horn, we had covered a little ground and were basically floating right at the line. Whew- we didn't miss the start! (This is a very competitive race that only the best of the best racers participate in and we didn't want to lose any face! -- JOKE) The problem was that we had to sail downwind to get to the start line and then immediately turn around to start the upwind leg. Cal-40 boats have so much inertia, they don't do well in low wind conditions and they don't do well with about-faces. The little momentum we had had on the downwind run to the line was completely obliterated by our abrupt about face. Couple that with a sudden shift in the wind direction, which eventually devolved into the anemometer reading 0.0 knots, and you are in for trouble. We sat at the start line for the next 15 min, so imperceptibly floating forward that we had to reassure ourselves of this fact several times by spitting into the water and watching our spittle dissipate. I really wish I had had a camera to capture the moment when the final horn sounded, marking the start. Usually this is when sails are trimmed and the fleet makes a mad dash across the line, not so in 0.0 knots of wind. We all just bobbed and blinked at each other. It was classic.

The RACE

Eventually the half of the fleet that had chosen to cross near the committee boat on the starboard tack picked up some wind. We were not so lucky, no wind where we were! We watched the majority of the fleet leave us in the dust, albeit very slowly. Meh. Soon enough the wind changed again and we were able to perceptibly move forward. The race was a very slow start, but enjoyable just the same. After rounding the first buoy, near the AGC building, we picked up some speed. We were approaching the downwind leg, so I helped John ready the spinnaker. I appreciated his patience and careful directions - I have never directly participated in flying the most complicated sail. If you don't know which sail I mean, spinnakers are the giant, brilliantly colored, balloon/hump looking sails that consume the entire front of a boat. You probably have seen them; they are hard to miss because they are usually such wonderful colors. Boats use spinnakers when running downwind for extra lift, basically its like attaching a parachute to the front of your boat; the wind fills it from behind and off you go. Spinnakers on a boat this size require a very large, heavy pole to keep one corner pushed out away from the boat to keep it full of wind. This pole scares the begeezus out of me because I imagine what could happen if it wasn't attached to the mast or the sail correctly. Thankfully, John is an expert sailor with a lifetime of experience. I helped him pin the spinnaker pole to the mast and attach each of the three sail corners to their respective lines. The best task of all, however, was reserved for me alone. He went aft to man the sheet and guys while I waited for his signal to haul the halyard. On his command I hauled down and up she flew. It was such a simple task, but so much fun!!

The rest of the course breezed by; we even managed to catch enough wind at one point to heel us over! Real sailing! The spinnaker had to come down when we crossed the next mark and I inexpertly dropped it faster than John, Ben and Andrea could stow it. A fair bit of it got dunked, but John forgave me since it was my first time. He has twin 13 yr olds, so I figure a wet spinnaker is the least of his worries. We raced neck and neck to the finish with another club boat, but they pulled away from us. We still enjoyed ourselves, immensely, I would even go so far as to say. 

Rafting up

After the race, John set anchor, we dropped our sails and rafted up with our recent defeators. This is technically illegal to do in Lake Union without a permit, but we like to live on the edge. John explained the history of the rule to us, something about a hippie barge full of miscreants that took up squatters residence by anchoring in the middle of the lake. They were fully within their rights to do so, so they got to stay! When they moved on, a law was passed requiring permits to prevent such willy-nilly use of the lake. Thankfully for us, the police never bothered to chase us off. We ate our lunch of cold split-pea soup, bread and an apple, which I might mention Ben split for us with his bare hands. Other boats glommed onto both sides and soon enough it was a party! Seattlites are much too open-minded to be deterred from staging a sailboat race in the middle of winter by a little thing called wind chill. Bah! (and then hanging around to party on the lake afterwards. - crazy kids indeed) Eventually we decided to sail a bit more, but we were the anchor boat - sorry peeps. We broke up the whole show because no one else was willing to drop anchor. We flew the spinnaker once more and puttered around, arriving back at the Waterfront Activities Center (WAC) just before 5. A wonderful way to spend a cold and dreary afternoon!  (If only a little boy could have joined us...)