2010 Harvest Moon Regatta Aboard SeafFlight

This year we had committed to do the Harvest Moon Regatta with friends Mark and Brenda, just as in the previous two years.  However, I had to go it alone... work kept Tammy tied up at home. 

We left Corpus Christi early on Monday morning, October 18th headed for the Gulf of Mexico.  We had plenty of crew with Mark, Don, Russ, Johnny and myself.  Brenda was to fly in on Wednesday night. 

 We motored across the Corpus Christi Bay and out through the Port A Jetties.  A few miles out in the Gulf, the wind picked up enough to fly Mark's new spinaker.

 We entertained ourselves by trolling two fisihing rods.  We caught two kingfish.  We didn't want to clean them, so we released them.  It was a beautiful sailing day.  The boat was doing around 6-7 kts.  Easy sailing, good company.  Mark heated up Brenda's beef stew for dinner, then set up a two hour watch schedule as we prepared for the night. 

 Johnny and Don took the first watch, Russ and I took the second, while Mark basically stayed up all night with both watches.  We took the spinaker down and found it necessary to slow the boat down so that we wouldn't arrive at Freeport before dawn.  It was still dark as we approached the jetties causing high anxiety as we strained to pick out the green and red entrance lights from the other green and red lights ashore.  Just as we hit Freeport, the sun broke out, we could see, and life was good.

We entered the calm waters of the ICW and the winds died.  Mark went below and cooked a full breakfast for his crew.  We motored our way towards Harbor Walk Marina.  Chip was behind us on Starfish and we noticed he ran aground, so we turned back to help pull him off.   Fortunately for us, our Kharma was shiny and clean... SeaFlight ran agound at the entrance to Harbor Walk, and Chip returned the favor.  We spent the afternoon on Tuesday and all of Wednesday hanging out in the Marina.  Brenda arrived in the evening and Johnny left.  We were also joined by my friend Chuck, to round out our race crew of 6.

 Thursday morning the winds were calm and we found ourselves motoring again.  We had another fabulous breakfast, this time with Brenda as the Hostess with the Mostest.

We motored all the way to the Gulf before raising a sail. The crew lounged around as we were over an hour early for our start.

We were joined by a tiny passenger.  This little bird hung out with us on SeaFlight for about 15 minutes before flying off to visit someone else. 

Finally we arrived at the start area.  The winds were at about 6 kts with 37 boats all struggling to get the best position.  Everyone was trying to find wind.   For the next 5 hours, we ghosted in 6 kt winds, doing 3 kts SOG.  We constantly adjusted the sails to the point that my neck was sore for three days from looking up at sails.  It was worth it though, we really did well against the other boats in our start.  

The winds began to increase at around 7pm.  By 9 pm we were badly overpowered.   We reefed the sails but were still were still overpowered as we screamed along doing 7 kts.  The waves built during the night causing the boat to toss around.  It was difficult to go below or to sleep.  The winds topped out at 35 kts overnight.  Friday morning, the winds eased somewhat but turned back up again to hold at 26 to 35 kts for the duration of the race. 

Friday saw everyone except for Chuck, spending their time in the cockpit to avoid going below, as seasickness was on everyone's mind.  The camera battery went dead and I wasn't going below to find the spare.  This is the one big wave pic I got before losing the battery.  The sease were every bit of 10 ft with short chop.  No exaggeration.  

We finished the race at about 5pm on Friday.  We crossed the line and continued on across CC Bay to the slip.  We had a fantastic sail on the Bay and cruised along at 7 kts on autopilot.  It was a good way to end the day.  We all went our separate ways to reconvene in Port A on Saturday for the post race festivities.

October Birthdays!

We have a rather smallish family these days...  No big Birthday celebration parties with cousins and uncles and aunts...  My Brother Mark's birthday is the 11th, My daughter Brittney's is the 27th and I share the 17th with Bruce.  We're all busy leading our lives so we decided to have a little party in the middle for all of us.  We were joined by Melissa, Matt, Krystal and Clay at Yoshi Japanese Cuisine on Saturday night.

If you've never tried Yoshi, it's time you did!  It's a little hole in the wall looking place with really great food.  The owner and staff give personal service and the food is all beautifully served with reasonable prices.

Mark was good and stuck to his healthy diet, while the rest of us went crazy, throwing caution to the winds. 

Clay and Krystal shared a huge sushi platter that looked (almost) good enough to eat!  OK, so I'm not so crazy about seaweed... but I love the seared tuna Tataki dish I got as an appetizer.  It was to-die-for!

The owner, Judy, brought out a sampling of each of the 4 different kinds of cheesecake with candles for us to share.  Now I've not been into cheesecake for years, having burned out on it due to overindulgence in my younger days... but this was really good!  It all got passed around and tasted and remarked upon, decidedly... the blueberry is the best. 

Our party moved on from there to meet up at the Annual Texas Jazz Festival over at Heritage Park. This Organization is kind enough to hold a giant birthday party for Bruce and I each year.  We've missed it in recent years as the full moon was earlier in the month and the Harvest Moon Regatta took precedence.  It was so well attended this year, I almost got the feeling that it wasn't being held strictly in our honor. 

Brittney's birthday on the 27th was all Matt's, so Bruce and I held our little celebration of her special day... one day early.  I gave her the opportunity of choosing cake, but she said she didn't want a whole cake laying around the house tempting us.  I vetoed cupcakes in favor of this fruit arrangement. 

Next came the gift giving.  Let us not pretend that Brittney didn't know full well what was inside of that gift bag.  She did a marvelous job of feining excited anticipation as she flung away the wrapping...

On her new Kindle with a hot pink leather case!  I'm jealous!  I just hope that she has time for leisure reading these days with all of the other things she's got going on.  She said "Thanks" and ran off to some prior committment and that was the end of our little party. 

The Last BYC Saturday Series Race for 2010

I've been so busy at work, I wasn't really too excited about this race.  I just wanted to rest... but Bruce really wanted to do the race, so off we went.  Brittney was doing School Stuff so it was just me and the guys. 

Elan was the last boat to start as this is a pursuit race, so we milled around until our turn.  The winds were out of the East.  We overstood the lay line for marker #71 to avoid being too close to Warrior

. 

We rounded the mark and headed for #19.  We had passed only Adagio by this time and were working hard to make up time on the other boats.  The winds were fluky and we had a difficult time making the mark.  We made two tacks and it was really questionable that we would make it without tacking again. 

The winds were not cooperating and kept shifting, first it was looking good, then it wasn't.  Clay was confident and it turned out he was right, but not by much!

After rounding #19, it was back to take #2 to Port.  We followed the fleet with one jibe before the mark.

 

Clay took the helm to take us back upwind with two tacks.  We passed Kerry Ann and Brigadoon near #71.  We put the pole back out after rounding and headed for the Gap.

We ended this race in 5th place.  I didn't go to the party at the Club but Bruce did.  Elan finished the Saturday Series in 3rd place after Agape and Warrior were tied for First, but Agape took first as they did better in the final race. 

Agape ended up joing BYC that night.  Only fitting as they came, raced and took home the prize.  We're glad to have another worthy Clubmember out of it all.