"Impetuous" participated in the 104th annual Vallejo Race on May 1st and 2nd, 2004.
As soon as the wind lessened, the shirts came off.
After the usual shoreside festivities at the hospitable Vallejo YC - music and dancing, food and drink, comparing of sunburns - the raft-up which filled the yacht club's harbor on the Napa River awoke to more heat and less wind. The club and the fleet waited for a breeze to fill as the morning wore into afternoon and more and more competitors dropped out. Finally, the race committee abandoned the 15-mile upwind return race to the Richmond Bridge, and the remaining boats motored for home.
Though as usual we were on the slow side, it was wondeful to be sailing in the fleet of spinnakers in San Pablo Bay. The wind picked up a bit for good but not strenuous sailing, and we finally got to the finish line against the ebb tide.
In the "J/Juliet" class, we came in 13 out of 15 on corrected time, 5 minutes behinds #12 and 34 minutes behind #1. (We forgot to set the prop vertical, so that may have slowed us down a bit.)
This year, there was room for us at the yacht club raftup, and we got a good position. You can see from our photos that we were having a good time. We ran out of tequila (probably just as well), helped along by great servings by Tanya, our "Margarita Maid". It's been my experience that I am often near a boat with a young man named Chris, who gets along very well with our younger crew, and it happened again (see photo "Krista, Kaersten, Chris"). Then off to the yacht club for dinner and dancing (for which, see more pictures). I enjoy these events because I get to see friends... Susan, Frank, Susanne, many Encinal YC people, people from the Latitude 38 parties, etc., including another Chris who ran off with our young crew in Cabo two years ago. David, Bill and Kaersten stayed in motels; the remaining three of us stayed on the boat and actually got a good nights sleep. It is rumored that one of our crew lost her bra and blouse getting back to the boat.
On Sunday, "Pancake Bill" fired up the pancake machine, and we had a wonderful blueberry pancake breakfast on the boat. Kaersten and Krista came by and delivered fresh deli sandwiches for our lunch...very much appreciated.
The Sunday race was cancelled due to lack of wind, so we motored toward home in the very light winds. We got to Angel Island, where the motor quit at 4:30, but we had our sails up and kept sailing to the Oakland estuary, where the motor again ran well at 5:30, taking us into the slip. We had our clam chowder dinner and wonderful desserts there, after having drinks with Trevor and JoAnn, my next-door-slip neighbors at the marina.
My notes for next time include:
It was a wonderful time with wonderful people...let's do it again!
