There is a time and a place for everything, and sad as it is, it is time for Solaris to be enjoyed and out winning races again with a younger skipper and crew, so it is off to coastal New Hampshire. The guys came to take her home today. We had a lot of great times with Solaris, and more await for the next group of sailors who will be out making it sail fast.
Like everybody, you have good days and bad days. Hopefully you rack up enough good days to outweigh the bad. We headed into the very last race of the season in a fairly precarious place – if we won, we’d be the season champions for the spinnaker class. Anything less and we would be 3rd or 4th overall. The odds didn’t seem in our favor based our finishes over the previous 3 weeks. But we stayed at the top of our game the entire race, finished in first with a healthy margin, and took the big prize. 
We’ve not had the kindest summer from a wind perspective. Its been rather light to non-existent for a couple of months. Hopefully that is about to change. We also had a bit of crew shuffling, but didn’t miss a beat in a recent race where this series of shots was taken during a perfect spinnaker launch.
Matt, Liam, Cindy, Rachel & Mike – savoring our 1st Place finish
Wow, what a great day. The conditions were ideal, and we obviously were firing on all cylinders, although you never really know until the results are read, so our 1st place finish was an exciting surprise. There wasn’t enough boats entered in our usual class, so we had to sail PHRFN, sailing against folks we don’t usually race. We had a really terrific high-drama start, port-tacking the entire fleet from the leeward end of the start line and it really paid off – giving us a pretty big lead right away. The wind was great, and we maintained good boat speed over 6 knots almost the entire race. Sometimes we can get a little tossed around in chop or current compared to the others, but that didn’t seem to be a problem and we just kept the boat moving, and maintained our position right to the finish.
We had a blast on our first race for the 2012 season. Most of our regular crew had other obligations, so our friend Mike H. and new friend Dan R. sailed today, and although we were short handed and made a few fumbles, we did well (1st), and the wind was great. Solaris has new sails and the rig is tuned differently than it has been previously, so we’re still figuring that out.
Its winter now, and Solaris is covered and somewhat dismantled for a few months. That’s a 37″ ice sickle hanging off the stern! There’s got a long list of projects to complete by the end of March, including major cleaning, re-covering the interior cushions, freshening the woodwork, re-running halyards in the mast, and putting everything back together. Hopefully we’ll have a tolerable March so the boat will be ready to be back in action in early April.
While we are rapidly heading towards the saddest day of the year – November 2nd – when the boat is coming out of the water for the Winter – we managed to have a great final day – taking 1st place in the Interfleet / Charlestown Cup race. Lots of wind shifts – it was all over the place, but a nice way to close out the season.
We had a great day of sailing at the Havre de Grace Invitational. It was very windy with lots of waves, and the crew took the brunt of it on the bow. But it was all smiles when they accepted our 2nd place trophy – one of the coveted duck decoys.
Wow – we had wind! But it was kind of interesting because we were sailing boat-for-boat with much bigger boats, and were the only boat brave enough (or stupid enough depending on how you look at it) to fly our spinnaker on the downwind legs. It was great fun.
I’m very fortunate to sail with a great group of young people. They’re all enthusiastic about sailing, eager to learn and make the boat go fast, and I really enjoy spending time with them. They also are very resourceful with a variety of talents they each bring to our team. Recently, what should have been just an ordinary spinnaker halyard replacement got more complicated when the tracer line snapped. Fortunately, spiderman Will came to the rescue and went up the mast to thread the new one thru.
spiderman Will to the rescue
Its a long way up there
All done!
Solaris Racing 