Sailing Sea Dog: Headed for the Azores: The Start

Now that I have had a few days to relax in Horta, its time to catch up with all that happened on the way to the Azores. There was not really a boring moment.

Start day, Wed May 17, was setting up to be a beautiful day, sunny, good winds taking us out of St Georges Harbor, through the Town Cut and east to the Azores. We had 15knts from the south, so a nice beam reach through the Town Cut. We had a plan, Michele and Michelle were head sail trimmers, Keith would trim the main and provide his racing acumen to help me, at the helm, navigate Sea Dog around the inner harbor amongst 29 other boats, all jockeying for position to be first across the start line, Mind you, this is typical in all sailboat racing starts, lots of boats sailing in close quarters wanting to be the first boat across the start line. The difference here was that most of the sailors and boats are not racers, they are cruisers and sailing in close quarters with lots of other boats in a small contained space with wind was not necessarily their forte. Again the plan, thirty minutes before the start, we would weighed anchor and head to the west end of the harbor to start our pre-race setup. As we left anchor, we noticed something very wacky in the steering, we could turn fully starboard (to the right), but only partially to port (to the left). We should have known then that we had a stow away aboard, a certain Mr Murphy had decided to join the crew aboard Sea Dog without invitation and very much unwelcome. I gave the helm to Keith and descended below decks to investigate the problem. Quickly throwing the mattresses off the aft berth and clearing the panels, I gained access to the steering quadrant. It only took a couple of minutes to ascertain the problem. The bolt that holds the auto pilot piston arm to the steering quadrant was jamming against the upper support when turning to port. Strange I thought, we sailed almost 1000 miles from Annapolis, down the Chesapeake, anchoring multiple times, in and out of harbors without a hitch since the steering system had been worked on at Bert Jabins Yacht Yard in Annapolis, now thirty minutes before the race start it breaks. Damn you Murphy! It took a good twenty minutes to get the bolt off and detach the auto pilot from the steering quadrant, a job that should typically take a minute or two, but the boat was being actively steered amongst a fleet of other boats (remember we were jockeying into position for the start) so I was working in a tight space on a, literally, moving target. Sure we could have moved out of position, slowed things down, but we had racers on board, we were now racers and we were determined to get across the start line as close to first as possible. Once I detached the auto pilot arm, the steering quadrant was able to move fully in both directions, problem solved! I headed above, back to the cockpit to check the time and our position for the start. We had a minute to the start line, Keith was on course to round up around the committee start boat that marked the south end of the start line. I took over as the main sheet trimer since Keith was in his race mode groove and moving Sea Dog around like she was a light weight pedigreed Whippet, fast and agile, ready to run. As the start gun sounded, we sped pass the race committee boat leaving them on our starboard with feet to spare, surprising all those onboard. They were not expecting anyone behind them, the look on their faces was priceless. Across the start line we sailed, with two boats crossing in the middle of the line just ahead of us. Since the wind was from the south, and we were sailing east on a starboard beam reach, our plan was to hug the right side of the Town Cut so that no other boats could steal our wind. Just as we were reaching the entrance of the cut, with four of the longer, faster boats in front of us, a large boat was entering the cut from the east, the timing could not have been worse! We kept on our course, we had no options, while the boats on the left and middle had to converge to allow room for the east bound boat passage. To compound the problem, the cut is higher on the east end, thus the wind from the south was being blocked. We could see the sails on the boats ahead of us were starting to flog a bit as the wind slowed and shifted. Since this was not a "true" race where motors are forbidden and if used an automatic disqualification, all boats were advised to have their motors running and ready if needed. I think all of the lead boats used their motors for a few minutes to ease the bottle neck formed by the reduction in wind at the east end of the cut and the sudden appearance of the large westbound boat, I know we did. We cleared the cut in fifth place, ahead of many of the faster boats and were very pleased with our performance. We had a plan, we stuck to the plan, even with the surprise appearance of Mr Murphy and we executed well on the plan. Three cheers to the crew of Sea Dog for a picture perfect start to a 2000+ mile jaunt across the Atlantic ocean to Horta, Azores!!