This is what happens in the back room at Forte when no one is looking.  We spent some time dumpster diving to come up with a carbon bow pole (made from a snapped Norseboat mast top section, bridge trauma) a carbon rudder post that replaced the carbon covered broom handle that broke last fall in sail trials, carbon and technora sails (had to pay for these), carbon mast round, 2.5”ID maxi skiff spar, carbon boom absconded with from a Swift solo order.  Rudder/keel foils and bulb molded from Clay Burkhaulter’s mini molds.

The hull is a standard 3/8” fir plywood international 110 hull (scrapped) stripped and re-sheathed with structural knitted glass reinforcements rummaged from dead inventory at Fiberglass Industries.  The hot paint job was shot gratis by our sales guy Mike from Providence Lacquer (I was going to bucket and brush it).  There, one little PHRF (rating 150) Wednesday night beer can boat ready to sail.

The first real work out was the Mystic River Yacht Clubs’ Distance Challenge (see “race review”). As a Wednesday night, 3 guys can sail “Got Wood” using one hand each, one for the boat the other for the beer.

“Race review”

MRYC Distance Challenge: A regatta with a lot of fun twists and tides:

“Got Wood” first race, the Mystic River Yacht Clubs’ Distance Challenge,  This is the second running of this event and I can say it that it’s a hoot.  The party and skippers meeting was a great time as the club was hosting 3 events Friday evening and the band got folks out on the floor.  Of course this led to more carbo sodas and a lot of speculations over tide and race strategy. 

The cse was set to be relatively short as the weather was calling for light easterlies in the AM switching to a southwesterly in the afternoon (read dead in between).  The skippers’ meeting was well run and the course, around Plumb Island (either way) in combination with a pursuit start.  This combination lead to some very interesting twists and turns. 

As the slowest boat in the fleet, the pursuit start also put us over the line first with very little local knowledge.  We opted to go for bust, haul ass across the Race (past Race rock) filling tide till 1:00pm then get to the western end of Plumb Island and  Plumb Gut (a near reversing falls) by 12:00 when the tide was due to turn foul. 

With a 10am start we made the 11 or so miles to the Gut no problem where we hit it at dead high water and slack tide.  Perfect, we all thought, till the wind dropped out and the tide started to flush us over the ground back out of the gut at 1 then 2 then 3 knots backwards!! Aaahhh Shhhh, we caught a little puff from the south and hid in a back eddy for 2 hours, when the wind filled from the south we were there to get it, the rest of the fleet was anchored on the far side of Plumb Island. 

With some wind we were able to work our way through standing waves in the gut against a 4 knot ebb. We were making good progress, getting back into Long Island Sound when we ran down through the rest of the fleet close hauled, rails stacked heading down current (but up wind) through the gut to start their reach down Gardners’ bay. 

We put in a couple of miles into building pressure popped in a jibe and tracked mid Long Island Sound current straight toward the finish. We could see the leaders of the fleet coming around the eastern end of Plumb with some mighty big shoots up. Their bearing to the finish had to be dead down wind but up current, so what looked like a sure massacre for our floating toothpick at the Gut, turned into a 7 minute victory.  

If you find you're in need of a tune up race next year on your way to block Island Race Week this is the perfect event and it's on the way.