Early May each year marks the beginning of the racing season in Annapolis and its kicked off by the National Offshore One Design regatta which is a race series that is held in 5 or 6 locations across the country. We are fortunate enough that Annapolis is one of the original locations and the series is celebrating its 30 years. Bebop has sailed in many of those regattas and has now at least 10 victories (or maybe that’s just when I run out of fingers) in that time sailing in the J/30 class.
The fleet was steady with 10 boats (nearly 200 in the whole regatta) and the competition has been on a consistent upswing for several years. We narrowly missed the mark last year when things just didn’t go our way and as a result, we were thirstier than ever to do well.
It all started on Friday morning early on the docks when we started getting the boat situated and all the many parts in order (including sails, rigging, sandwiches, water, (ahem) beer… anything you’ll need for a full day on the water). The race committee was already committed to getting as many races in as possible as the wind forecast for Saturday was not good (too light).
Sure enough, we got 5 races in. That’s a lot! We’ve frequently gotten 4 in, 3 is common… 5 was a burner of a day. We started out great with a 1, 2nd, and 2nd. Race 4 came down to a neck and neck battle between us and what would become our weekend nemesis TotaledMayhem. On foredeck I could swear we crossed the line a couple feet ahead of them under full spinnaker and diving for the line. Alas, they must of just eked us out for the win and I started really becoming concerned that our race committee (RC) was not up to the challenge when I saw many a blank stare (mostly in the wrong direction) from them as we passed closely by.
Race 5 was a surprise. Despite the RC’s tendency to roll the race starts out in a sloth’s fashion, they kicked into high gear to get right into a 5th race and there we were in sequence again. This time, things didn’t go as smoothly as we’d like. Ugh. As bow guy I put us over the starting line early. Then when we re-started, our RC (yeah, the one I’m not too confident in) didn’t clear the X-Ray flag (indicating OCS – On Course Side) until we actually gybed below the line. At this point we’re looking at the transoms of the entire fleet. Ugh, hail Mary time. We went right when most of the fleet has been consistently going left and we reeled back two boats for an 8th. Later we found out that another boat lost a protest in that race and was disqualified… moving us to 7th.
We started Saturday tied for 1st (amazingly after that 7!). We had to get back on the horse, but the forecasters were right… no wind. They eventually started us, but it was called off (thankfully) when it took nearly an hour to get to the top end of the course on leg 1. Thankfully we packed plenty of food and beer for the day. We bobbed around for another hour or two before they sent us in.
Sunday we’re still tied for 1st and if we’re lucky we’ll get two races in. No races can start after 14:30 (per race rules). Race 6: over early! Eff Me!! I can’t say this one was my fault though, the prestart was pretty exciting and we had to do whats necessary. We cleared the X-Ray quickly and attacked the course passing several boats along the way, but not quite enough… we scored 3rd and TotaledMahem got the win. Now we’re 3 points behind, but need 4 since we would lose in the tiebreak.
Race 7 was for all the marbles and we hit the line like a freight train: full speed and perfectly timed. It paid off too by getting us in front of the fleet where we could camp on the competition pushing them further back. It was definitely game on and we made zero mistakes in tactics or crew work. Our only bobble was caused by the last place boat in a fleet ahead of us on the race course when they fouled us, then collided with us at the last windward mark of the entire regatta. We pushed hard and finished with a bullet after establishing a comfortable lead. But nervously we watched behind us to see where TM ended up. We then watched the most dramatic finish ever as 7 boats a minute or so behind us all finished within 10 seconds of each other… each jockeying for position on the other. We counted each boat to see where TM ended up and whether it looked like we had pulled off a come from behind victory. We needed 4 boats between us and we ultimately had 5! We won!! Wow, what an unbelievable finish!!
To close off the weekend, in typical Bebop fashion we ran out of gas on the 3 mile motor back to the dock… so we had to sail into the slip in downtown but we laughed the whole way.