Around the Island race day!

We celebrated Leap Day by participating in a race around Stocking Island, organized by the Regatta committee (fancy that, a regatta with sailboat racing in it!) We convinced Graham, Drew, and Brad from African Dream, Buffalo V, and Biscuits to crew with us for the race, and thought we’d have a fun time showing those multihull sailors what life is like on a monohull!

The committee set the race up nicely, with the smaller/slower boats starting first, then starting successive classes moving up in size and speed. Not too long after our class’s start, we found ourselves catching up to a competitor in our own class, and a spectator taking photos managed to get the moment we passed them on film. Patrick did a nice job driving as we made that maneuver.

We soon neared the northern mark for the race course, where we would turn to come down the outside of the island. Time to get the Code 0 down and roll out the jib, for the more upwind leg (it was still pretty cracked off, though, so the sailing was lovely).

It was nice to see our competitors in the rear view mirror.

The sailing was truly just beautiful, on both sides of the island. Conditions were about perfect. It was one of the best days of sailing we’ve had on Oestara, for sure.

After navigating through some coral at the bottom of the course, making the turn around the southern mark, and unfurling the code 0 to head north again to the finish, we cracked the ceremonial beers.

The race committee told us as we crossed the line that we were the first monohull to finish, and we also knew that only Kite, a super fast performance catamaran, had finished ahead of us. So we were looking forward to the race results announcement at the party that night!

We were pretty stoked to find out we were first in our class.

Thanks to our crew for an awesome race and a whole lot of fun! We’ll have to do it again sometime.