Written by Captain Scott Hughes
Schooner North Wind First Place for 3rd year in a row! Also wins the “Challengers Cup” for best time in B & C Class
The North Wind departed Gloucester City just after midnight on Friday October 10 on our way to Baltimore to do public sails for the Fell’s Point Festival. “Petey the Parrot” helped us sell cruise tickets during the festival (see picture below).
The following Wednesday the crew started the 36th annual Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race with the “Parade of Sail” around Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Over 20 schooners participated in the parade. This was followed by a BBQ dinner for all crews on the dock.The race started on Thursday, near Annapolis, with northernly winds around 20+ knots! This was very favorable for a fast race. As the North Wind is one of the heavier schooners in Class B, the strong winds were in our favor. Greg piloted the NW to the first B Class over the start line and we were off down the bay with all 5 sails flying!13 hours later, with the winds freshening to near 30 knots, we crossed our finish line with the best adjusted time (rating factors are calculated for each vessel similar to the handicapping used for horse races). We still had about 9 hours to go to arrive at our docking site in Norfolk VA. It was a trying but very satisfying race. A bottle or few of celebratory rum disappeared rather quickly!
The Norfolk festivities included the annual Pig & Oyster roast, awards ceremony, evening shanty sing, and schooner crew visitations to other vessels. We hosted a number of folks on the North Wind, with our soon- to -be famous “3-Peat Punch”.
At the awards ceremony, we were surprised to learn that not only did we win the Class B race (for the third year in a row), but also the “Challengers Cup” awarded to the schooner with the best corrected time to Windmill Point (our finish line) in both classes B & C. .We departed Norfolk on Sunday morning with 7 crew (3 crew and Hermes the dog left us in Norfolk). The winds had swung around to the south and were forecasted to be in the mid 30’s by midnight. We therefore elected to anchor Sunday night about 10 hours from Norfolk on the way home to avoid the highest winds. We continued on Monday morning with winds “only” in the mid 20’s, and arrived home in Gloucester City, 25 hours later on Tuesday morning.Huzzah! |
