Our First Cruisers Rally
17 March 2012 | Thompson Bay, Long Island
Jill
We made it back to Thompson Bay, Long Island in record time, Bud said it was 6 hours from when we raised anchor until it was set again. We came with the cruisers rally. They announced they had 33 boats signed up and they said there were 40 boats already here at Thompson Bay. That made Bud and I pretty worried about getting a good spot to anchor, so we were ready to go as soon as they announced that the fleet was taking off. The way the rally worked, you all leave the harbor at about the same time and make your way towards the destination. The actual timed part was from White Cay Bank waypoint, around the Indian Point waypoint, and up into the entrance to the harbor. But since you're all traveling together, the whole thing sort of feels like a race.
Anyway, we had the main raised and the anchor up within three minutes of when they said boats should get going. And then Bud had me pull out the jib still in the harbor. We had about three miles to sail in the harbor and we were among the first boats to the cut out of the harbor. We had to lay off the wind to take the jib in, because we had to motor almost directly into the wind to get out the cut. It was pretty bumpy because the tide was still going out and the wind was blowing in. Once we made it through the cut we put the sails back out and went along quite nicely.
We thought we'd have to motor the second leg, as we had to turn pretty close to windward. But the wind went a bit further north and we only used the engine for a little while. We reached the waypoint and let the race coordinator know and they recorded our time. We had all the sails out and this was a better point of sail and we were making good time. We may have had too much sail out, we took the staysail in because that's the only one I can handle without either turning downwind (jib) or up into the wind (main). It didn't help our speed, but it didn't hurt. We were making between 7 and 8 knots most of the time. We were passed on the way to the mark by two boats, a 50-foot Beneteau and a catamaran. We passed the three boats that had been ahead of us coming out of the harbor during the timed part. The last boat we passed was the ketch in this photo. I never did get their name, but am trying to find them to share this picture.
When we got past the last waypoint we had to come as close to the wind as we could, but we still couldn't lay the finish line. We sailed on to the point where Bud thought we could make it through with the wind on the other side and then we tacked. Bud judged correctly and we came between the two boats that were anchored as the finish line. They were a half-mile apart, but with the wind like it was, everyone was cutting very close to the boat on the port (left) side of the line. The nice folks on that boat took a picture of us as we crossed. We ended up being the third boat across, and we were able to come up and anchor in our old spot.
This evening we had a get together on the beach and met some of the other people in the rally. The lady on the Beneteau said they got a nice picture of us as they blew by us. (I also got a nice one of them.) So eventually I might have two more pictures of Earendil under sail. Parts of the day were pretty stressful to me, but in the end I did have fun.