Round the County is an annual race around the San Juan islands that make up San Juan county. It's hosted by Orca Island Yacht Club and Friday Harbor Sailing Club. This was the 34th running of the race. This year the course was clockwise. It's a PNW favorite given the beautiful scenery, challenging currents and fickle and or strong winds. There were 120 boats and over 700 sailors competing in this years race. The race is about 76 miles with a stopover in picturesque Roche Harbor on Saturday night.
It sure felt great loading Mako up with all the overnight and cooking gear. It was easy to locate all the Hawaii gear and we even brought leftover food from the Hawaii trip. The delivery up to Anacortes was very calm and dry. We had a stopover in Kingston and went back to Sourdough Willy's excellent pizzeria at the top of the dock. You should check this place out if you're in Kingston, WA.
Delivery pics below. Once we made it to Cap Sante Marina in Anacortes we were assigned a slip at the end of a work dock next to a large fishing boat. We scored some meat pies from the food truck and Andy brought dinner for the whole crew! He made chile rellenos, steak fajitas and cornbread and we had a great time eating in the boat.
The forecast was for dry sunny and no wind. It was cold Saturday as we work up at 5:00 am and started preparing for the day. We were greeted with nice breeze on the starting line and hoisted spinnakers for the first leg from Lydia Shoal to Davidson Rock. We had a great spinnaker run and enjoyed gybing the boat in flat water. Puget Sound still seems oddly calm after all the time in the ocean this summer. We turned west to the half way mark at iceberg point. Spinnakers came down and we passed a few groups of boats as we reached the halfway mark. We were skeptical that the race would be a full course and started feeling pretty good about our halfway time. The wind was light and spotty and we made our way up Lopez Island. Then as we chased puffs we went farther away from the Islands. We found ourselves match racing Freja, an Aerodyne 43 that was in our class in the Pacific Cup race. We decided to stay in front of Freja to protect our lead. This was ultimately our downfall as boats near San Juan island had both breeze and current and boats on the outside had neither. We fired up the iron genoa once we determined that we would not finish before the time limit. We noticed some kelp on the rudder as soon as we quit as well. As we motored up to Mosquito Pass it became quite clear that we made the wrong call not hugging the island. There were a ton of boats ahead of us. We found the wind hole and parked in it.
First day Race pics including the party grills being maned by Josh and Tom. Josh got the whole crew brats. It was a great paring with the free beer!
Sunday was again better breeze than expected for the start. We had a good start that put us in a clear lane with all the fastest boats in the fleet. We showed really good upwind boat pace as we compared our speed and trim against some of the best sailed boats in the PNW. There was a massive current swirl at Turn Point that we just about sailed around but still got caught in. After rounding Stuart Island and heading to Patos we encountered more intense currents and spotty wind. Seeing much of the fleet sucked down toward Waldron Island we decided to stay north and favor the Canadian side of the course. Again we caught some kelp on the rudder but this time we were quick to back down to free the debris. This paid off as we were in the building breeze first and were able to crack off a bit as we aimed for the Patos Lighthouse. As we rounded spinnakers went up and we had a great spinnaker ride to the finish area hitting 10 knots many times. We worked on sailing a bit hotter angles and the boat responded well. We were feeling good about or position until we approached the finish line and noticed the first pack of boats with zero wind being swept over the line by the current. We jockeyed to get our boat into a position so that even without wind we would be swept over the finish line. Crossing the line was a huge relief and it really felt like a top 3 performance even though we placed 7th out of 15 boats in our class. One of these years we'll string together two good days for this race.
Sunday Pics:
Bill's face at the finish says it all:
Jason and Andy had an uneventful return to Olympia. Much appreciated after last years heroic effort in gale force winds and huge waves!
RESULTS 12th of 15 in Class, 59th of 92 finishing boats. Hard to finish well when you don't finish one of the days. We'll be back next year!
Cheers!
Lots of cool pictures here: