Good Old Boat Regatta – A Creature Rigged for Racing
The first Good Old Boat Regatta (the magazine) was held on Tampa Bay and hosted by the St. Petersburg Yacht Club. Since I had done some racing in Colorado, I made some contacts to see if I could crew for a boat that was registered to race. After a short discussion with the captain, I was offered a crew position. This was going to be fun as the race was in the spinnaker division. I had minimal experience in ‘flying’ a spinnaker (the big billowing sail out in front of the boat).
Odyssey was a fast 25-foot spinnaker class sloop with a good reputation for winning. I do not remember the make of the boat, but it was short on creature comforts – rigged for racing.
This is a picture of the crew. The owner is in the red hat, his tactician is in the yellow shirt, I am in the green shirt, and the other two crew were airline pilots who enjoyed their stopovers in the Tampa Bay area.
The racecourse was a triangle, with each side being 2 miles. The race was twice around for a total of 12 miles. In this picture, the top three boats are rounding the final mark and headed toward the finish line. We were in the yellow boat.
This is a shot of the leading boats heading toward downtown St. Petersburg.
This is our Captain-Owner being awarded the Third Place Trophy.