Century Club: Richard Eggert

Weather was moderately warm with on-and-off light rain and fog. Jim, Andy, and I set out from the DSC docks just after noon, somehow getting our boat rigged and underway before everybody else. Wind was steady around 10 knots, and we progressed out of Northwest Harbor pretty quickly, reaching Fort McHenry before any of the other DSC boats had even reached Canton. The wind direction was ideal, allowing us to head directly toward the remnants of the bridge at a close reach, making around 5 knots the whole way there. We looped around the center bridge support from south to north, then turned back toward the fort at a shallow broad reach making between 5.5 and 6 knots, our speed peaking at 6.3 knots shortly after I took over on the helm. We returned to Northwest Harbor shortly after 3 to find most of the other DSC boats preparing to dock. We waited until the boat that was docking in front of us to finish docking, then performed a downwind/crosswind docking into our slip. We momentarily got stuck in irons while trying to turn away from the wind after dropping our mainsail, but managed to get out of it with a combination of sculling and paddling. The docking was otherwise uneventful, and we were de-rigged and off the docks by 3:45.

We initially had 6 boats signed up for the race, and my crew consisted of Kelly and Stephen.There was a possibility of thunderstorms, so one of the skippers bailed out right away. Another skipper took a boat out and practiced for a bit before bailing out shortly before the race for unknown reasons. This left 4 boats left to compete. One of them retired 5 minutes into the race for some reason, and then there were three. Both of the other two skippers were apparently unfamiliar with the course and missed the first mark, and continued onward despite my implorations over the radio. They continued completely off course, then turned around for reasons that are unclear, since their messages over the radio were unintelligible to me. This left our boat as the only one to complete the course, which we accomplished in very good time. As we approached the finish, light rain started, so after docking and de-rigging we headed to Little Havana for drinks until the rain passed.

Only two skippers showed up, so only two (J/22) boats competed. I had Kelly and John on my crew. It was neck and neck for a while, then we shot ahead near Canton and maintained the lead out to the R6 buoy and back to Canton. At that point, the wind died, and both boats were in danger of not making it back to the docks before sunset. The other boat gave up on the wind first and started rocking and eventually paddling. A few minutes later, as they caught up to us, we started doing the same things. We eventually found paddling to a be a bit more effective, brining us up from 1 knot to 2 knots, which was enough to get us back to the docks just before sunset.

The morning Access-Ability event was cancelled at the last minute due to high winds. Bhavani and I had planned to sail afterwards in the afternoon, as she had a desire to get more experience in high winds, but moved our plans up to 11:30 due to the cancelled event. I recruited Kelly to join us. I had mostly rigged up the boat by the time both of them arrived close to 12, and we departed shortly thereafter.

I had seen earlier that there was a "chance of thunderstorms" in the forecast in the afternoon, but had assumed that was most likely in the late afternoon. Once we reached Fell's Point, I decided to check the weather again before we got too far from the docks. I saw that NWS had issued a "Special Weather Statement", and opened it to find that a line of thunderstorms bringing "potentially damaging hail" was west of Baltimore heading east at 40 knots. We turned around and made our way back toward the DSC docks, but to our dismay, the sugar barge at the Domino Sugar refinery went underway just as we approached, forcing us to navigate around it, costing valuable time. We could see the storm approaching, and tacked toward the docks as fast as we could, but heavy rains started as we got within about 100 yards of the docks. We lowered our jib for docking, but then got hit with strong gusts up to 30 knots, which, in addition to tossing us around quite a bit, caused the jib to start riding back up the forestay. Bhavani got up to try to tie it down, but just as she did so, we started getting pelted with hailstones, so I told her not to worry about the jib. We fought our way back to DSC docks, and some people who were there for a cruising mentoring session helped us secure the boat, and we all took cover under the BMI pavilion just as the storm was beginning to subside.

We changed our soaked shirts and waited until the storm had fully passed by, then headed out again. The wind had become considerably stronger than it had been before the storm. At one point, we lost control of the jib, which wrapped around the forestay. I attempted to untangle it, but was unable to, so we lowered it and tied it to the forestay. We practiced sailing around Canton for a bit, then headed back to DSC.