This is my favorite overnight race for the Alberg. It is long enough to be fun, but short enough so that the return trip is reasonable. This is a 45 mile race that starts just off of the Naval Academy, and runs down the bay to Solomons Island, MD. The day ended sunny, but hazy with light to moderate breezes. A mild low front was supposed to pass that would bring the winds from the southwest to the northwest or north. The current was ebbing, but we were close to low tide, so that we would have a foul current until about 2 am.
The start was uneventful. We started at the pin end of the line, in light air. Just before the start, the wind shifted farther south. This meant that our decision to go low meant that we started at the wrong end of the line. We spent the whole first leg moving to the windward position. The other two boats in our class started high, but did not work to stay on the high line. We were able to move from last place to just behind first at the first mark, Tolly Point.
Just before the first mark, the wind shifted back. We were now able to sail toward Thomas Point Light with our spinaker. Halfway to Thomas Point, we had to drop the chute and put the genoa up. This was our sail choice until about 2:30 am. When the lights went out, we had about 5 knots of wind, but this slowly and steadily built until it was blowing 12 to 14 knots off true wind.
As the wind slowly built, the wind also very slowly moved to the north a little. Finally at about 2:30, the wind was from the north north west, and we could put up the spinnaker. Our first set went pretty well, but it soon became apparent that the wind wasn't finished moving toward the north. It was time to gybe.
We gybed the chute, and ended up with a beautiful wrap around the forestay. This took us about 5 minutes to untangle. We ended up having to drop the halyard about 10 feet. This allowed the head of the spinnaker to unwrap the top wrap. Once this occurred, the whole sail unwrapped. The halyard goes up, and we are off to the races again.
We had an apparent wind reaching upwards of 18 knots, when Ron calls back "Bryan, you are not going to believe what I am seeing." Being that it is the middle of the night and I can't see anything, I was a little irritated with the 20 questions game. Ron wasn't doing it on purpose. He was in shock. "The spinnaker pole is flexing the spinnaker pole track away from the mast."
Now it was my turn for shock. It seems that the 31 year old bolts had chosen that moment to shear off. One of my crew, Mark, quietly says "Why don't we take the spinnaker down." I wholeheartedly agreed, and repeated it to Ron. Then comes Ron's classic line, which was also the classic line of the night. "I can fix it."
"Not while it is up, Ron." "Sure I can." The track then took that oppourtunity to prove Ron wrong. . .it turned into a pretzel. Now the spinnaker had to come down, and we had a wonderful chinese fire drill. We were off again, sailing slowly under genoa, trying to collect our thoughts. We probably wouldn't be able to win the race without a spinnaker up, and there was no way to do that without any track on the mast.
At about this time, Ron looks up and sees a freighter off of our starboard side. He sees a red port side light, a green starboard side lite, and the forward and aft range lights the are in the center of the boat are lined up . . . it is heading right for us. Donna, who is a licensed captain, has a saying. . .the more lights you see, the worse off you are. we could see every light showing on this ship. We were moving quickly enough to clear its path, but we couldn't figure out why the thing was steering west to east. It wasn't. Our compass was stuck again, and we had steered dead east in all the confusion. The ship was heading north. Bad driver, bad driver.
After about 30 minutes, Ron and Gary were talking excitedly. It seems that there was about half the track left on the mast. We in the cockpit hadn't realized that, and I never asked for a full damage report. I just assumed that the whole track was unusable. (Every time I assume something, I get burned.)
After checking to see that the track that was left on the mast was in relatively good shape, we put the spinnaker back up. However, this time somehow we ended up with it on the inside of the genoa. Ron went to fix it. Instead of taking it down and putting it up right, he unclipped the guy from the spinnaker, and ends up getting stretched between the pole and the spinnaker. He started to clear the genoa to the correct side, but couldn't hold the clew. The boat slowed as we lost all pull from the spinnaker. Ron retrieved the spinnaker, and somehow clipped it back onto the guy. Yet again, we were in business.
After a short while, we were somewhere in the Taylor's Island vicinity. I looked over to starboard, and saw 6 to 8 blinking amber lights. It looked like a barge convention, but they were much to close together. Then I thought that maybe someone had gotten smart and had put warning lights on a fish trap. But that meant that if we were inside of a fish trap, then we were in VERY shallow water. I sent Ron to see where we were. The rest of my crew, including Ron, wasn't too concerned. After about 5 minutes, and some mumblings from Ron, he told me to have someone else drive and to come down and look at the chart.
The good news was that we were in deep water. We had however been sailing right over a finger on the bottom that read 5 feet. The only reason we didn't bump in the waves was because it was just past high tide.
By now, things had settled down on the boat. We were heading right for our next mark, R"76", and we were with some larger boats. This is always a good sign. We rounded this mark, and headed in to the Patuxent River. We initially rounded with a boat to the inside, but we made a great rounding, and were able to get above them into clear air. They were a bigger, faster boat, and soon pulled out from us. Then they started driving alot higher. This led to some confusion on our boat as to where we were going. We finally got that sorted out. . .the other boat was lost. As we made our way to the river, and got closer to land, the breeze lessened some, and we had a more enjoyable ride. We were slowly passed by about 4 faster boats. We hadn't done so badly after all.
As we approached the finish line, the wind was light to moderate. We could hear an occasional finishing gun. We got closer and closer. Then it was our turn. We were called over. Waiting. No gun for first place. We had done well, but so had the another Alberg. They finished 11 minutes ahead of us after 45 miles. The bent spinnaker track had cost us first place. Third place was an also ran. She finished about one and a half hours after us.
It was a disappointment. We had done well compared to other fleets. That didn't matter. We were second, but had some great sea stories to tell.