A Solid Swiftsure Run in the Logbook...

Winds continued to build after our last post, making for a record breaking Swiftsure event, with quite a bit of carnage on the race course. We ripped our heavy #1 genoa, the big front sail good up to about 18 knots of breeze. Shown on the left is our much smaller #3, which we'll carry until we get into storm/survival mode. Nice work by Manske and Dr. Hanna had the sail patched back up, and ready to use later in the day. Can't say the same for our favorite 3/4oz spinnaker, which blew into pieces in a 34+ knot gust right before race rocks on the way home. By the time we got it sorted out, and jibed without a spinnaker, the angle was too tight and we carried the #3 through race rocks, and all the way to the finish. Wind stayed strong all the way in, and built through the night for folks still out, and Orizaba finished at 1:10am on Sunday. Fastest run by us by a couple hours, putting us in 2nd place in our class at the turn (corrected) and finishing 4th, just 1/2 hour out of 1st, and less than 15 minutes out of 3rd. Complete results can be found here: http://www.swiftsure.org/files/Swiftsure_2007_Preliminary_Results.pdf Apologies that the race tracker didn't seem to work very well, one of these days they'll get it right.

Stories continued to roll in a the dock, with one boat losing their mast, a man-overboard (MOB) forcing another boat to retire, WyEast from Portland was on their side long enough with a wrapped spinnaker for the coast guard to show up and offer to lend a hand.

After a relaxing Sunday morning (nice not to be sailing) we all met up for a nice dinner at Spinnakers, and then all went our separate ways via slow ferries (http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries), fast ferries (www.clippervacations.com), and even seaplanes (www.kenmoreair.com) back to Portland on Monday. Dr. John and the Davis' took the boat over to Friday Harbor staging Orizaba for a much deserved summer break of cruising the San Juans.

Photo credit Sean Trew.