The Dataw Cup

While staying at Dataw, we planned to enter the Dataw Cup race. Last year, Wind Dancer sailed across the finish line in second place, before the PHRF handicaps were applied. This year, we planned to do eevn better. Rick had researched the course and plotted the lines. Our crew was ready. We were ready. Unfortunately, the wind was not ready.

We had planned to raise the spinnaker and sail away from the start, but once again, we were foiled by circumstsance. The 5 minute warning caught us too close to the starting line. We floating sideways down the river and across the starting line about a minute early. With the wind at about 4 knots, and the current against us at 2 and 1/2 knots, it took us three tries and 25 minutes to actually cross the starting line. The wind died entirely for about an hour, as all boats floated merrily down river on current alone. About 3 hours into the race, the race committee decided to cut about 10 miles off the race. Unfortunately, we were so far behind that we couldn't hear the announcement. Our first indication was the steady stream of boats passing us motoring back to the marina. We had to call the committee boat to find out where and when the race was ending. Fortunately, the wind picked up the last few miles and we actually caught one boat at the end. With our crew of Luke and Jan Sand, Kia and Gail Mallott, we had lots of laughs about the day, thinking how to phrase the results to make ourselves look a little better. The best we could come up with is that we placed 4th in our division........which had 4 boats.

We still had a great time and celebrated our loss at the race dinner Saturday night.

Return to Dataw

In early October, we returned to Dataw and began the process of preparing the boat for cruising. I've said it before, you can leave a boat in perfect working condition in the summer, and return in the fall to find multiple problems. So, after driving to Charleston to have the sails repaired and returning to Charleston to pick them up again, we discovered that the engine water pump was leaking.....not a good thing. The only replacement immediately available was, you guessed it, Charleston. So for the 3rd time in 5 days, we drove the 5 hour round trip.The trips did provide us with an opportunity to have lunch with friends, Charlie and Jennifer Black. After lunch we drove by artist, Jennifer's gallery window on King Street and looked at her beautiful art work.

In addition to the sails and the pump, Rick found dozens of other projects, putting the sails back on, gel coat repairs, door handle repairs, slight leak in the top of the water tank, washing, waxing, provisioning, he even found a bilge he'd never noticed hidden under the shower. It was filled with all sorts of nasty stuff, including dust from the original construction. This points out the Mars/Venus difference between men and women. Rick was almost gleeful when he found the previously undiscovered bilge. Another project! Hooray! I'm sorry, but women do not generally think that dirt and mold encrusted hard to get to spots represent an interesting challenge.
Be that as it may, we are now down to a single task, reattaching the wind generator. We've studied the weather and it looks as if we may be set to leave on Thursday October 24th