Immediately following the Northern Century race, David Odendahl checked in with Bruce Hedrick about how the conditions Bruce predicted panned out on the water. His race story, however, is a glimpse into a different way of looking at the race and -with his blessing- I’m sharing it with the rest of you. Winning’s fun, but sometimes quality time on the water, conservatively sailed, with the other half of the double-handed crew, is reward in itself. Next time you decide to skip a race because, let’s see, bad sails, rough bottom, too much junk onboard, bad rating or countless other reasons, just think of how great it would be just to spend that time sailing with your family or friends. -KH
By David Odendahl
Just getting over sleep deprivation.. I think my son Mark and I each got about 3 hours apiece.
It was another amazing experience. We kind of look at N100 as a team challenge more than a race. Sure we try to go fast and beat other boats, but it’s more about the experience between us, the boat and the Salish Sea..
As we have done in the past, we generally run under the genoa during the first 10 miles of the race, and it’s frankly pretty effective. It’s quite an effort to manage the chute on our boat (CS36 with mast head/dip pole) and my kids don’t sail as much as they used to, so it’s old, out of shape me on the foredeck.
The wind is so inconsistent at the start, and frequently close/beam reaching, the other boats lose a lot of time playing with their chutes. We just blithely keep going along under the genoa (the tortoise vs the hare) and usually keep up and even lead the pack sometimes, as one can see on the tracker.
But eventually it usually settles down into a light air run up Rosario and to Point Roberts. That’s when we need to pop the chute on the way north.
But it was a really dark night, with a ¼ moon and the smoke and a lot of ship traffic, so I made the executive decision to wait until dawn for the chute.
It was probably a critical choice, since one boat was about 30 minutes ahead of us, and they got around into the northerly from the Strait of Georgia that had set up like you said.
For us, we got there too late, and got stuck in a hole trying to round, and lost a few miles to a couple other boats who were able to skirt the hole we were in.
We made nice progress in the northerly you predicted down through Haro Strait. We had a tough time escaping Haro Strait… Usually we head out on port until we get headed quite a bit, and then we tack over to Hein Bank.
Again, we found ourself in a hole that took a while to get out of.
Once we got to Hein Bank, the winds had lightened considerably, and we drifted through the night as the ebb started. Our main goal was to stay out of the VTS lanes.
We called the race at 8:30 AM when it became impossible to finish, even if the wind filled in.
We turned the motor on and crossed the finish line with 45 minutes to spare.
There was maybe a 6 knot southerly in Rosario once we rounded the corner from Haro.
It sounds miserable, but it was fine. Again, we look at this race differently.
The best part of the trip was when we found out on the trip home that my son had gotten an early acceptance into graduate school at UW (Electrical Engineering)!
–David (and Mark) Odendahl
Kurt grew up racing and cruising in the Midwest, and has raced Lasers since the late 1970s. Currently he is a broker at Swiftsure Yachts. He has been Assistant Editor at Sailing Magazine and a short stint as Editor of Northwest Yachting. Through Meadow Point Publishing he handles various marketing duties for smaller local companies. He currently is partners on a C&C 36 which he cruises throughout the Northwest. He’s married to the amazing Abby and is father to Ian and Gabe.