Let me start off by saying Belle Aurore received her first “gun” last Friday! As many of you may know, a gun is fired for the first boat in fleet to cross the finish line. Last Friday was Ladies night in Oxford, but since we had just returned from vacation mid-week (and my company had announced a re-org), things were pretty hectic and I wasn’t able to contact anyone around sailing. But I convinced Cindy to skipper anyway, and promised I would meet her 3 conditions to do so:

1. We have plenty of good crew (we had only myself)
2. The winds be very light (it was blowing a strong 13 – 18 kts out of the South)
3. Read the race instructions (this I actually had done, but could not remember whether spin or non-spin started first)

Boy was she “happy” once we got to Oxford and understood the actual environment. But we put up the main and the heavy number one genoa, and were off! I set us up for a conservative starboard start up near the pin end of the line as I did not want to tangle with any other boats (trying to trim both main and genoa by myself in that much wind was keeping me too busy to provide much tactical input). We had a good start, but because the club end of the line was so favored, both Big Time and Manxman port-started to great advantage and were several boat lengths in front of us. We tacked at the beach and followed them out to the Choptank light. And that’s where Cindy started to show her stuff.

Despite having never sailed Belle, Cindy kept her pointed upwind perfectly, pinching just enough to keep Belle on her feet while still powered up. And powered up we were, with the rail close to being buried. She started to reel in Big Time (sailed by Ellen Rajacich) and Manxman (sailed by Annie Clucas). By the Choptank light, we had passed Big Time, were just behind Manxman, and were well up with the spinnaker fleet who had started 5 minutes prior. This may come as a shock to those who know me, but due to the wind strength and with just the two of us aboard, I had chosen to sail non-spinnaker for the race. So upon rounding we set the pole out and went downwind wing on wing.

By Bachelor point we were closing fast on Manxman, and they decided to cross in front and take the inside, windward position. I repeatedly directed Cindy to sail deeper to port to allow us to get around them to leeward, but she was having none of it and drove us right under their lee (at one point our pole was deeply overlapped with their boom). Amazingly, Belle sailed right past, and by the clubhouse we were clear ahead. We stayed wide to keep clear of the calm on the upriver side of the club, timed the wind shift perfectly to drop our pole, reached to the leeward mark, and we established an inside overlap on the Karen S so that they had to let us round first. Somehow I managed to trim both main and jib, Cindy executed a great tactical rounding, and after a short upwind leg back to the club, BOOM we took the gun!

At that point she decided she loved me after all, and we stopped by the club to sample the “sails and ales” menu as our son Ryan was running the kitchen that night (best enchiladas ever!) After correcting for handicap, it turned out we kept our first place finish (by only 6 seconds over Manxman)! Way to go Cindy! Guggy Irving took a couple of shots that night – here’s one.


Doug Jurrius