How the hell did those two knuckle heads know where to go ??? Well it was easy, I got the hot tip from coach Dave Hodges. We looked at the wind forecast and the tide charts, the gears started turning in Dave’s head…. He said go left for current relief heading out, and right going in, Sweet… we had a plan.
We had a decent start with a little puff that pushed us ahead of most of the fleet, then stopped dead and rolled by everyone. But we had a plan and we where sticking to it. So, we slowly worked are way to the south tower following the Wolf Pac A- loot- trash [editor side note: this is a reference to Andy Hamilton, owner of Moore 24 Barbaloot, Pete Trachy owner of Moore 24 White Trash, sailing on their new Donovan 30 Wolf Pack]. Tacked and headed in toward mile rock, we had just enough pressure to keep us moving forward. About half way to mile rock we looked back, and most of the fleet was going backwards. Dude it’s working, we need beers and tunes, so I jump down below to queue up some Bob Marley and grab a couple cold ones…… poooooooof, the manual cord on my PFD had come out and got snagged on the hatch. Mike was laughing in my face before the thing could fully inflate. No problem I have a spare cartridge I’ll just do I quick reload, oh wait its in the truck!!!!
So we made it out of the bay with the Wolfpack and Banditos ahead us, flopped over to port and the drag race began. We were a bit over powered with the J2 and that mixed sea state was terrible, but we made it work. Banditos was to in front and leeward of us, they where blocked by the jib so we didn’t have constant visual with them. We sent it straight out the main channel, by the time we got to close to the last mark I look over and see Banditos way low. We looked at the chart plotter, we were right on course. I don’t know why they went so low, But thanks John for the early x-mas gift. We tacked at the Lightship with the Condor and headed off to mile rock. When we got about a quarter mile for mile rock we saw something going on with the condor, we were about set but held off for a few minutes to see what was going on, didn’t hear any chatter on any of our 3 radios. After a few minutes they got it together a sailed off. So, we set, had to gybe to clear the south tower, then back to starboard for finish.
Scott Nelson and Mike Radziejowski on Lowly Worm 2.0
Thanks Karl for all your hard work, I probably would have skipped this one if it wasn’t for you pushing the offshore thing. Thanks Syd Moore for the use of your life sling and jack lines, and of course Mike Radziejowski for sailing with me
Hope to See Ya All in Santa Cruz for the PCCs
Team Worm 2.0
[Editor note: Huge thanks to Leslie Richter at Rockskipper.com for the fleet shots!]
2019 Farallones champ John Kernot and Steve Carroll on Banditos
Joel Turmel and Hood River guest driver Dave Gee on Firefly
Peter Schoen and Roe Patterson on Mooretician
Mark English and JP Sirey on Mas!
Conrad Holbrook and Eric Ochs on Topper II