Pirate Night

When you come to Pirate Night aboard Capaz and it's blowing 30 knots, if you are not a sailor, you become one or else walk the plank.
This was the situation at this week's Thursday Night Race. We usually have a few "sailors" aboard, but we ended up with Captain Brad and his trusty First Mate me. Since we are racing our house, we decided not to fly the spinnaker or start with the mizzen. Of course, with only the main and the genoa flying, Brad wanted to maximize the performance of those two sails which is how I ended up driving alot. Driving is something that I have some experience at doing; professional main and genoa trimming-not so much. One would think that after all the racing I have done I would know all the ins and outs of it all. Nope. Still learning - and I am guessing that on our next little adventure - there will be plenty of opportunity to expand my knowledge in my weaker areas!!! There are reasons for my deficiencies. I have been super lucky to race with very talented sailors and I like to be on the winning team. Since sail trim is very important to winning, I pretty much deferred those jobs to the very talented sailors around me and therefore concentrated on whatever job they needed me to do, though I do draw the line at galley slave. As a result, I am a mean start timer, I can work the "pit" (that's raise and lower sails using the halyards) and I can trim the spinnaker for hours (for some reason, many people find this sail trimming job less than exciting especially in light air and are more than happy to give little old me a chance to learn it - that and 12 days straight of spinnaker trimming on the way to Maui beefed up this column of experience on my sailing resume).

Anyway, we had an exciting sail down the first leg with Sean following Brad's instructions for trimming the main. Brad maximizing the genoa and me driving. The wind started to die halfway to the second mark and Brad Mc became an expert at furling and unfurling the genoa. He may have also picked up a few trimming tips along the way. We finally raised the mizzen (still a very new sail to me) and Kelly took on trimming it - Tim would have been very proud of her. We ended up motoring to the wind and then just plain motorsailing most of the last leg. Tiff and Brogan even took a quick turn at the wheel.
At the party the kids entered the pirate costume contest and Bryce won a chest full of pirate booty! These nights are such a fun way for us to get together with friends and enjoy a night of sailing. We are hoping that we can have our engine back on-line quickly so that we don't miss the last two races, but that is in the capable hands of Pat and his team a Pat's Marine Engine. Keep your fingers crossed for us!