You came, you sailed, you conquered Summer Sailstice 2023! You're job is to email us your photos, stories, videos and memories so we can share with your community and tag us on social media. Enjoy the snapshot series!
Here's a quick update from Gary Williamson who had some last minute change of plans (we've all been there!) for the Summer Sailstice!
He writes:
"I was supposed to take my boat out and sail to a beach for a swim. But the people that were supposed to join me could not so I changed my plans and went to where Tetiana,a New York 40 I race on was entered in a distance race instead.
"We prepped her for the "Peters Rock Race" and headed out. The 9 of us on board including the son of one of our lady crew. The angle was right and right after we crossed the start line , the foredeck crew launched the kite. That gave us a good head start on the rest of the fleet as they did not think of it till we had it up and flying. The 5 KTs of wind was not much but with the spin flying we were making over 4. The wind started to pick up and changed direction so we doused the spin and put up the genny. Our lead had extended, we then tacked out to get to the lay line of the mark, a mile off shore. When we tacked on the port lay line the wind had clocked a little more so it was looking good for a good spin run back to the start/finish line 5 miles away. We tacked to round the mark and launched the kite immediately. We were a good 7 minutes ahead of our closest competition, the wind picked up some more and Tetiana was loving the 12 KTs of wind off her starboard rear quarter, as we sailed further away from the other boats. One slow jibe later we crossed the finish line and recorded our time and radioed it in. I handed the helm over to our youngest crew member and grabbed some refreshment while giving some guidance on steering with a spin up. We sailed down wind till we saw the first following boat cross the finish line 14 minutes + after us. We figure we owe them 12 minutes corrected so were confident of not only the on the water first but the corrected as well. We then doused the spin and put the genny turned around and headed back to the harbour. We sailed into the harbour started the engine and went head to wind and dropped the sails. After docking and cutting the sails away, we broke out a few bevies and had a celebratory drink to our well run race."
