The Passage ( 24 hour sailing race)

Last weekend was the "Passage". I entered my boat "Jazz " and had Gene and Tom aboard as crew.
The race is a 25-mile closed loop on Lake Thurmond on the GA/SC border.
I devised this particular toture session several years ago as a way to break out of the windward-leeward dinghy-style racing that the Augusta Sailing Club seems to prefer. I have a big-butted "oven-class" cruiser that will wail its way through heavy winds that'll curl the toes of a dinghy racer. Especially in the dark at 3 AM. And I wanted a real test of navigation. Even though the lake has excellent depths and well-marked channels, grounding the boat is only one missed buoy away!
This year Ian Buckley organized the event and decide to change the start/finish time to 0900. (No I do not use the redundant Army-style 'hours'! Aboard the real ships of the US Navy a four figure time signature with the appropriate letter to designate the local time zone is the official usage) Therefore the "official" start time was 0900R or 1300Z ( both the same). Incidentally 1300 UTC is another way of talking about Greenwich Mean Time. Okay, enough! We started at 9 in the morning on Saturday.
This year the race was very unusual in that we had good wind the entire time. My boat and crew love heavy air. The boat rolls over and literally punches away through the waves. If the boat slowed to less than six knots some one was not paying attention! The peak speeds were 7.4 knots both up and down wind.
We led the race three times. At the start for two hours we roared up the lake, until we got into a slower patch of wind than Ian and Greg Hatcher. Once the sun went down, my superior electronics gave us a real edge and we made up over a mile of separation and pulled away again.
I ran a rolling watch system to allow a litle crew rest. I went below and pulled the settee cushion onto the cabin floor and went to sleep with the boat heeled over and tacking through 30 degrees of heel. I didn't put everything into the floor, and paid for that mistake by getting clonked in the face by Tom Renard's very heavy gear bag when it launched across cabin in a "roll and jump" tack.
While I was down an innocent navigation error cost us the lead. The racing was close enough that any error was good for a place change. Both Greg and Ian slid by.
When I cam back on deck at 0300 we were behind the leader by a measured mile on radar. This was on a downwind run in Little River, a winding unlit blackness full of keel-grabbing humps and underwater cliffs. We ran double headsails and managed to pull up on the lead pair while they struggled in the dark with spinnakers and a zig-zag in the course. They were conservative and stayed a quarter-mile north of me in the mouth of the River and allowed me to slide past when when we turned south for the dam. I know they think I cut a corner at Green 11, but I had both radar and visual contact on the buoy to my starboard.
After that exchange, we led for three hours until two unfair things happened.
First the wind got light. My boat is fast in the wind, but heavy for her size. When the power goes down, the boat slows. Then the Ebay jib hung up on the mast spreader tips. I had repaired the rips in the sail from hangups at the Hangover Regatta on New Year's Day. New rips. I would have traded that $400 sail for the lead easily, but when it hung up it was firmly anchored to the spreader and back-winded. It's like putting on the brakes and if you allow it to persist, the boat will sail backwards at up to 3 knots, or more! I had to spin the boat to get the damned jib loose. Twice.
That put us behind the leaders, but competitive. Until a petite and very smart lady named Sue smacked me with a lee-bow maneuver. Since she saved my life in 1997, I'll never be mad at her, but a few self-directed Middle-English imprecatives did escape!
After that, we could stay with them, but not close the gap. Finished an honest third after sailing over 100 nautical miles in a day. I know a lot of cruisers who would kill for a hundred-mile log!
The brunch at the club, a cooling shower and good friends made for a memory that beats rooting for any football team.