A Family Affair at the Great Pumpkin Regatta

My 79-year-old mom has been sailing on all sorts of boats recently, including a Cal 40 (OK, fine), a Viper 650, and a Martin 243?!? I decided late this season, moved by some others in our fleet whose moms are no longer with us, that my Moore 24 experience would be more meaningful if I sailed with her, despite her being a newbie to the boat (though a lifelong sailor) and not having quite the strength to really trim that main in breeze with one hand. We’ve been doing modest events (beer cans, Encinal Yacht Club, Richmond Yacht Club), and Great Pumpkin seemed like a fun one: optimizing for memories more than performance.

Well, that we did on Sunday.

The rest of the Moore fleet went counterclockwise. It looked like such a great line into Raccoon Strait at the start. But I stuck to the strategy I had laid out that morning via documented text messages to Joel [Turmel], for whom I was rooting (I’m not suggesting you listen to me, Joel: A broken clock is right twice a day). Clockwise was the correct call.

Ted Floyd graciously joined the s***show program as guest trimmer. I was just screwing around on foredeck due to a wrist injury, though there was plenty of foredeck work to be done. My 8-year-old daughter Ellie was properly dressed in her junior sailing wetsuit and K-Pop Demon Hunters Halloween costume, munching on candy the RC had tossed to her before the start.

It was a comfortable upwind with the number three. The breeze from Alcatraz to Angel was just aft enough for me to be able to set once we rounded the Little Alcatraz buoy. I’d advocate for this race to always be a counter for our Roadmasters series — but since it wasn’t this year, I busted out the not-class-legal, secret weapon A5.

It was about 130–135 TWA, best I could measure on my wet iPhone, and according to those with wind instruments, gusting 25 knots as we closed in on Angel Island. We had an insta-crash/shrimp during the hoist and a couple of keel-out-of-the-water wind checks, and I took the helm for a couple of minutes during the ripping reach, during which we paced Invictus right before their kite EXPLODED, passed David Rogers and Taylor on a Wabbit with two people standing on the keel, and heard cheers from boats going the other way. Ellie has confirmed: Moores don’t capsize.

We did a baldy swap to the symmetrical in Raccoon Strait and a just-manageable pole-on-the-headstay reach all the way back to Richmond. I crawled into my PDX-inspired inflatable dinosaur costume to cross the finish line in style.