Bishop Rock Race

From the deck of Slow Poke

1500 Friday, February 22, The Rabbit boat Runaway started 9 boats on their 165 mile race from MDR to Bishop Rock and back to the west end of Catalina for the finish (plus 30 miles or more to home port). The wind was from the SW at the start Slow Poke already had a tuck in its main. Wind speeds over 20 knots and 2 Boats were having a hard time with their genoas. Seas were not as big as predicted. Slow Poke has never seen such calm seas for this race. Wind came around more to the south and making the West End of Catalina on one tack was a cause to eat a couple pieces of pizza and have a beer. All the boat that stayed in the race were now ahead, Slow Poke could just see Voice of Reason. Midnight Check in was done by Runaway, Slow Poke wrote down all positions. Then Slow Poke Radioed Tenacity to give him some comfort letting him know that Tenacity owed 9.5 hours to Slow Poke for the Race. 6 am Check in Tenacity already rounded the mark and was 2 mile from it with light wind on the nose. Slow poke and some others were under spinnaker catching up. The wind went forward and the spinnakers came down. 13 mile from the mark Slow Poke saw Tenacity go by looking so cool. Slow Poke tried to radio Tenacity but there was no contact, he must have been sleeping. He was warned not to sleep by Slow poke at the skippers meeting, oh well. Elixir was next to go by with a big smile from the man on the helm. Then Runaway looking fast with Robin doing all the work as usual. Arrow went by way east of the rum line looking for more wind, or mermaids. Next Voice of Reason went by, I figured at that time they were 2^nd or 3^rd in the double handed fleet. Slow Poke rounded the mark at 1055.

1200 check in Slow Poke was 60 miles from the finish. Tenacity reported he was told to make to port by a Helicopter big storm a coming. All the other boats were doing so well that Slow Poke’s skipper was thinking about getting sailing lessons from Rod and Frank. 1800 check wind starting to build two boats left to finish Voice of Reason 16 miles from the finish and Slowpoke 26 mile to go. Voice of Reason reported they were being staffed by a helicopter a lot. And knowing they had to go all the way back to Redondo beach in a storm. At night an Angel was shining big lights on me and contacted me on 16 and told me to go to port. I told them I was heading in that direction, at least I thought I was after being blinded.  Slow poke finished almost 2300.

The trip home was a wild ride, big seas, big wind, horizontal rain. Main down, Jib rolled up some and the boat was flying. About 6 miles from MDR the wind came around from the north. It was time to un strap the motor from the keel and put it on the motor mount hanging out off the stern . Now usually in that kind of seas wind and rain it would take 3 men to do it but the skipper did it by himself.