This weekend was a stunning weekend of sailing and a weekend of big contrasts. On Sunday, the missus and I joined 12 other boats on the annual shakedown cruise from Raritan Yacht Club to Keyport Yacht Club.
The club has an active group of cruisers who will cruise all over the Northeast through till Haul-out Day. My friends Tim and Ed run the cruisers and do a great job of organizing a nice series of cruises during the Spring, Summer and early Fall. Through the Winter they put on dinners and seminars.
This first cruise is a simple 5 mile cruise Southeast across Raritan Bay where we have reciprocals with KYC. In Keyport we had lunch with one of the skippers I race with, Howard and his bride Skippy along with Ed and Susan who are the previous owners of Messing About fka Tiger Lilly. After a civilized lunch, Alice and I sailed around the bay for 4 hours in perfect conditions, 10kts, clear skies and a dry 80 degrees.
We then had dinner back at the club, on the deck, watching the sunset over the bay. A beautiful evening was brought to a close with fireworks off in the distance running West-East down the southern shore of Raritan Bay.
Dee-lightful!
Sunday was a horse of a different color. The club has a holiday race to celebrate Memorial Day. A couple of my newer friends at the club, Dawn and Jerry were racing Dawn's Viper. It sails best with three so I made up the party.
I have one thing to say about the Viper. It bloody rocks.
A Viper is basically a big, fast, dinghy with an asymmetric spinnaker. We had a good start but over a long course to windward we struggled against the bigger boats. However, when we rounded the mark and flew the chute, the boat took off.
For most of the time we were in sub-10kts of breeze and fighting to keep the speed up, but in the last mile, the wind picked up big time and in winds over 15kts, the Viper takes off. We were planing well over 10kts when things got a little too exciting. We broached and nearly went over.
We were able to dowse the chute and finished the race just on the jib and main. With winds over 20kts that was more than enough. Still very fast and very cool.
Not sure how we did in the race and frankly I could care less. What a blast!
Frickin’ awesome.
Viper owners love to rave about their boats. It’s good to know that it’s not all hype.
That was a lot of fun! I can see you really had a wonderful weekend. Thank you for sharing!