2012 Harvest Moon Regatta

[jvercher]

Is anyone else entering the Harvest Moon Regatta - from Galveston to Corpus Christi?

Jeff Vercher

[EdHouston]

Moonlight Mile will be doing the race.

Ed

[jvercher]

Ed,
We purchased "Abracadabra" from RayNWanda.  It is now known as "Boomer Schooner".  We will be sailing in the HMR, so we look forward to seeing you there.  Any tips/lessons learned that you care to share on running the regatta in a Ketch would be appreciated. 

Sincerely,
Jeff Vercher

[RayNWanda]

 I have not ran that race. Last year they had basically a milk run, the two years before that they got hammered by weather. Some equipment torn up. Wanda and I were anchored just inside the Matagorda jetties 3 years ago on the Saturday morning of the race. There was a parade of broken boats and beat up crew coming in that started at daylight. There was one out there with no mast- Towboat US went after him.

[jvercher]

Thanks Ray,
Now I feel really good about entering...   

Jeff

[RayNWanda]

 Just be aware- it ain't always easy. It may be an easy downwind run with the wind over the port quarter, or not. End of October is cold front time. Cold fronts in the shallow coastal waters of the gulf can be pretty vicious. I recommend you have paper charts of the entrances at Freeport, Matagorda Bay, and Aransas Bay. The boats that were entering Matagorda bay had to pound their way through an 8' tidal rip outside the jetties to get in. One guy said that his entire crew had been seasick since the start. He was the only one aboard that was not incapacitated. He just wanted to get in somewhere so he could get some sleep. We saw a 45? footer with a blown out genoa come in. There are some posts about a previous Harvest Moon- check them out.

[RayNWanda]

 We were there for the start. Upstairs in a bar a couple blocks west of the start line. We got some prestart pics of Blame It On Buffett and Boomer Schooner. Could not locate Moonlight Mile in the prestart crowd. Then we moved down the street to another upstairs bar and watched the fleet go by- got some more pics. Down the street to an upstairs restaurant for another beer and a burger. We'll see how the pictures come out and email them to the guilty parties. Tell us race stories! 

[jvercher]

Hey Ray,
Would love copies of the picts.  Well, the Boomer Schooner had a rough time.  We broke a chain plate on the backstay outside of Port O'Connor, and ended our race.  Until the chainplate broke, we were catching up to the pack on Friday in 27-30 knot winds; moving at 7-8 knots.  The old girl was handling the weather very well.  The odd part of the story is that that we lost the chain plate on the heeling side; or Leeward side.  Assuming all things equal; we should have lost the windward side due to the stress??? 

Jeff

[RayNWanda]

The chainplates on the main backstay are equally loaded because of the split in the backstay. Evidently the weaker one let go. That could have turned bad quick- no other damage?
We were watching the tracking page. It looked like you turned to go back toward Galveston, then entered Matagorda Bay. We suspected something had gone wrong.

[jvercher]

We were going to motor back to Freeport via the gulf, but the waves were too  rough for motoring.  We pulled into Port O'Connor to top off the tank, then went via ICW.