NCC Rundown Part One!

Here's part one of my side of our North Carolina Challenge adventure:

Jack and Katherine met me down in Cedar Island, NC. We launched the boat off the trailer and they paddled it around to the starting beach while I went to the captain's meeting. Chief ran down the usual race details: SPOT tracker setup, safety brief, etc. After the meeting we rigged the boat on the beach and packed our gear into dry bags. Mostly we had to figure out how much gear we could leave behind. Katherine finger-painted the new NC hull numbers on the front of the boat while we rigged the mast, sail and boom. Also, check out the sweet pressure treated hiking benches. These were built in the lull between coats of paint as a simple solution to allow us to hike out safely in high winds. To stick with the boat's KISS philosophy they were lashed to the crossbeams (akas) with flat bike tubes, just like the outrigggers (amas).

After packing most of our gear (we used our sleeping bags and pads and other important bits that night) we went to the Driftwood Motel for a tasty surf-n-turf dinner. After making last chance checks, we settled in for the night. Next morning we woke up and prepped the rest of the boat as the sun rose over the beach. 50 other sailboats, kayaks, and canoes were there on the beach, including my friend Alan (SOS) and his dad Paul, in their Core Sound 20, as well as Sam and Tim in a Hobie 18.

At 7:30 the race was on. We shoved the boat off the beach and into the shallows. I jumped in the boat a little too soon and had to jump out and push again, but all in all it was a pretty uneventful start. As we rounded the breakwater at the ferry landing it became clear that we were not going to win this race. The winds were light and we lacked the sail area to really get up to speed. We watched Sam and Alan's boats (and the Hobie trimaran fleet) get smaller and smaller in front of us. The slow start gave way to more slow sailing up the Neuse. The wind was coming from the SW, exactly the direction we wanted to go. We could only make about 4 knots on tacks going on tacks a hair more than 45 degrees, so we figured we were making less than 3 knots towards our goal, so we dropped the mast and paddled straight towards it. After a good stretch of paddling (aka Character Building) the winds picked up once more. We raised the mast and got in some better tacks. Despite the windier conditions we felt like we were making little progress. For several tacks in a row we used the same aiming point (water tower, radio tower) as the wind continued to shift to always stay directly in the desired direction of travel. Despite our slow progress we were enjoying the ride and took turns hiking out on alternating tacks. Photos show our spirits were still high. We also made good use of the dorky hats Katherine created for us.

Now we get to a dry spell - no pictures for about a day or so. I was actually using my iPhone as the GPS unit for the race, using the Navionics chart app to get marine charts that work with the data service off. It worked great, but I needed to save battery. That meant not taking too many photos or videos or checking football scores during the race... oh well. At any rate, we were still sailing in the Neuse when we got doused by a microsquall. Black clouds showed up on the far side of the river and we figured we needed to reef the sail. We took in about half the sail and were about halfway prepared to get wet when the storm came, soaked us to the bone, and moved on. After the storm, the wind died completely for about a half hour. We paddled halfheartedly until the wind showed back up, this time a little weaker than before. By nightfall (almost exactly 12 hours after the start) we had just barely made it to the mouth of Clubfoot Creek (the NW corner of the NCC course). We decided to break into our MRE stash for dinner and change into warm dry clothes before what we hoped would be a dry paddle up the creek and into the Harlowe Canal. Little did we know how wrong we would be!

Part two will be posted tomorrow (still need to catch up on sleep!).