Yemaya's First Sailboat Race

Ever since Yemaya was even tinier than she is now, she has laughed whenever she gets a gust of wind in her face. She closes her eyes and puffs out her cheeks and sputters and chuckles. It was so funny that we made up a rhyme to go with it:

Breeze in the face
Breeze in the face
Just enough for a sailboat race!

Last night Yemaya got introduced to the thrilling white-knuckle world of sailboat racing... which for her was much the same experience as the thrilling world of sitting in the backseat of a car on land...

Our courageous crewmember had all the latest high-tech sailing gear:

• Stuffed dog. Check!
• Rattle ball. Check!
• Jingle bell bracelet. Check!
• Soggy Ak-Mak cracker to slowly masticate into paste and rub into carseat. Check!
• Mama's sunglasses to open. And close. And open. And close.... Check!
• Jammies in case I fall asleep. (Don't worry, I won't) Check!
  

We weren't planning to fly the spinnaker, but Yemaya held onto (and chewed on) the pretty yellow pole topping lift just in case.

Since beer can racing on the Oakland Estuary is such a serious, competitive pursuit, I diligently printed 2 out of 3 of the available documents on the oyc.org web site:

• Course Map. Check!
• Sailing Instructions. Check!
• Fleet Assignments. We'll never need that...

Flash forward to 6:25pm. We are circling the starting line with a few dozen other boats of varying sizes trying to find other boats that look "like us." I see a Santana 25. That's gotta be similar rating to a Santana 22. I sail close enough and ask "Do you know when we start?" He replies "Are you racing non-spinnaker? You guys are all Fleet A. That was your warning gun." Doh! We were kinda slacking because, being slower, we're usually among the last boats to start. We are nowhere near the start.

Minutes after our starting gun, I'm still singlehanding the boat towards the line while Sarah breastfeeds Yemaya down below. It's a little dodgy trying to steer and trim both sails while peeking underneath our 155% Genoa. The two boats that started on time are miles ahead of us, but miraculously there are boats behind us too!

In light wind, less-wetted surface trumps longer waterline. In our small, stripped-down boat, slowly but surely we pull away from the pack of longer, heavier keelboats. The wind is coming over Alameda instead of down the Estuary, so what would normally be an upwind-downwind course is a reach both ways. The wind direction favors a genoa over jib+spinnaker, and later we even pace some of the spinnaker fleet.

Some of the racing highlights were slaloming the narrow gap between two Columbia 5.5's, rolling one to windward and one to leeward, while the baby shrieked "DADADADA" (I'll never get tired of hearing that!) and the other yachtsmen looked on in horror at being overtaken by a floating pack-n-play.

We finished just as we started, with Sarah down below breastfeeding Yemaya. The race instructions specify two laps around the course, but we heard a horn as we finished our first lap. "Hmm, I guess that's it." We looked around and kept sailing just in case, but it seemed the other boats are dropping headsails and going home.

In the end, we came in just ahead of the middle of the pack. But I think we won a moral victory for proving we could sail well with the baby, and enjoy almost every minute of it!

SAIL #	SKIPPER	BOAT NAME	BOAT MODEL	RATING	FINISH	ELAPSED	CORRECTED	PTS.	COMMENTS	YC
562	Joey Hansen	Magic	Mercury	234	19:22:10	0:52:10	0:41:15	1
18686	Fred Minning	Svenska	Peterson 34	123	19:17:49	0:47:49	0:42:05	2
53	Ari Rubenstein	Mardi Gras	Santana 22	237	19:27:56	0:57:56	0:46:52	3
3674	Robert Hamner	Pequod	Catalina 27 Tall	189	19:33:31	1:03:31	0:54:42	4
18020	Roger	Mystic	Newport	177	19:35:56	1:05:56	0:57:40	5		SSS
157	Leroy Gilles	Summerplace		198	19:37:27	1:07:27	0:58:13	6		EYC
285	Warren Taylor	Kiwa	Ericson 32-2	183	DNC	:	:	8		OYC
535	Paul Mueller	Iskra	Mercury	234	DNC	:	:	8

It was amazing how Sarah multi-tasked between sailing and mothering. At one point she was literally trimming a genoa sheet with one hand and a putting on a puppet show with the other. Damn. There are moments in any marriage where you think, "If I wasn't already married to this woman, I'd get down on one knee right now..."