First a little history leading up to this weekend.
There is a semi famous sailboat race that takes place here in Seattle, on Lake Union every Tuesday evening after work from May-September, it’s called the Duck Dodge (www.duckdodge.org). We usually race in it on our friend Dave’s boat Scepter. The last Duck Dodge of the year is held in October, this race is called the Rum Run. It was this weekend to be precise. It is however not held on Lake Union. This race is held out on the Puget Sound.
We also recently joined the Sloop Tavern Yacht Club (www.slooptavern.org) and they had a cruiser event that coincided with the Duck Dodge Rum Run, called the Poker Rum. Sorta like the Harly poker runs, where you start off with a card or two and pick the rest of your hand along the way or at the end.
A few weeks back Me and Tawn decided that we were going to join the race in our boat Palarran. Odd thing to do with your home, but what the hell. We invited our buddy Dan and two other friends of ours Luke and Tye to join us as crew on the race and spend the weekend in Port Madison at anchor.
The Crew:
So, I got up early on Saturday morning and headed over to the Sloop Tavern to pick up my two cards for the poker run and not to have a 9am beer. Dan was at the boat by the time I got back to the Marina. Luke and Tye showed up a few minutes later. We got things stowed away and headed out to the north end of the Marina to where the start line was setup.
The race course started at what we call the “Hamburger Bouy” at the north end of our Marina. The race course went north to the Meadow Point bouy then south to the West Point Bouy, back north to the Meadow point bouy and then west across the sound to the entrance of Port Madison. The wind was out of the Northwest at about 13 knots.
We sailed around with the other boats waiting for the start. There were 3 start times, the first was at 11am. We were starting in the 3rd start….the slow boat start. We goofed up and got a very very bad start (by “we” I of course mean me). Basically we were the last boat across the line. :) We only passed one other boat, but at least we did not end up in last place. Crappily enough we were so far behind that they did pull the finish line about 10 minutes before we crossed it. Oh well, theres always next year.
A little action shot of the “crew” raising the Spinnaker:
Once we dropped the sails and motored into Port Madison we saw two different Rafts. Two very large rafts. We were looking for the raft with our Friend Dan Freeman on his boat Papillion. This ended up being the second raft. We later learned that originally it was one big raft, but the lines blew apart and the raft split into two.
A picture of the Raftup:
I did not feel comfortable rafting up to the end of this very large, very flimsy raft, so we opted to drop anchor about 50 yards behind the main raft and row over in the dingy. I wish someone would have taken a picture of us rowing up to the raft up in the dink. We had 5 adults and one very large, very full cooler packed into the raft. We were loaded and the raft was sitting pretty low in the water. We made it without incident, but we were told it looked funny as hell.
The gang on Dan’s boat:
In true Duck Dodge fashion, there were many drunks climbing from boat to boat and plenty of food and booze to go around. We hung out for quite some time, but decided we had better head back to our boat to cook up some dinner. So after the poker hand (We did not win), we all piled back in the dink and rowed back to Palarran for dinner and more drinks.
A picture of the raft up from Dan’s boat:
P.S. Dan cheats at Cribbage.
