This was a nice one. Sloop Tavern Yacht Club hosts the Blakely Rock Benefit Race every year and proceeds go to a local charity. This year’s beneficiary was Frog Prints e!, a local organization that is their own words is “a non-profit organization that combines leadership opportunities with the learning of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in a sailing environment.” Check out their website.
The wind forecast looked a bit shaky for the day, we had some overcast in the morning but enough breeze for a decent start in northerly breeze. 100 boats were registered and split up in 16 classes. Image raced in class 8 with 5 other boats.
We had just put on a feathering prop which helped us a lot in the light air. In the middle of our upwind leg from the Shilshole Bay mooring buoy to Blakely Rock, the sun came out and the breeze did a 180 on us. As usual, this happened while we were crossing the shipping lanes, however, luckily we were far enough away from a freighter that was coming at us from the south. We set the chute and off we went to Blakely Rock.
When we rounded the rock, we had visual contact with Grayling, one of the competitors in our class who we believed at the time was leading the class. As it turns out, Whistling Swan, an Islander 36 had actually slipped by while crossing the shipping lanes and was ahead of the pack.
The following beat was ‘champagne sailing’, the sun was out and we had a very pleasant 12kts true wind. We rounded the Meadow Point buoy and did our final, short run to the finish line.
In corrected time, we came in 3rd behind Whistling Swan and Grayling, who had beaten us over the line as well. I consider this a great results. Even better, at the during the sweepstakes at the reward ceremony, Image won a haul out.