Round The County 2024 sailing HRAVN J109 race in San Juan Islands November sail boat racing Hallett

Описание: Sailing "Round The County" is one of the longest-lived, longest-distance, and most beloved sailboat races in the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound. We circumnavigate the San Juans with a halfway stop in Roche Harbor, San Juan Island after starting off the Lydia Shoal buoy east of Blakely Island and Orcas Island.

Sailing in November in the PNW is a weird treat, which requires warm and dry clothes and plenty of gloves to swap off when they get wet and cold. This year, for the first time in the race's history, there was little/no wind on Saturday with a ~3 knot adverse current, meaning boats who might have attempted to start would be swept backwards. In some races that may mean dropping an anchor, but those are not conditions in which to begin a race. After a couple of hours of postponement, Saturday's racing was abandoned and 120 boats redirected through Peavine Pass or Obstruction Pass motoring to Roche Harbor. We arrived before the Beer Tent opened and enjoyed walking the docks during daylight before retiring to cabins, rooms, and bunks.

Sunday morning, this edition of Round The County being a clockwise race, we started at the mouth of Roche Harbor in very light wind. For a few hours and fewer miles we ghosted across calm waters--or vigorously adverse currents--to make it around Turn Point on Stewart Island on the east side of Haro Strait. Then we started stretching our legs tacking up Boundary Pass (between USA and Canada) as we sailed to and around Patos Island.

The wind grew to the point (mid-upper teens) that Hravn needed to change from #1genoa to #3 jib. This required Hravn to go "bare headed" as we swapped sails. Later the wind dropped to 7-9 knots and it was time to swap back to the much larger #1. This was perfect until as we approached the finish line -- just the last mile or two -- the wind pumped up into the 16-18 range, gusting 20-24 knots. A bit too much for our genoa-plus-full-main sailplan, requiring the jib trimmer, mainsail trimmer (your correspondent), and skipper/driver to be adjusting continuously...me playing the main traveler in the puffs and letting the mainsail flog, fully eased out, as needed to drive the boat the remaining small distance to the (fairly short) finish line. If we had had more miles to race, we would have reefed the main and done a headsail change. Instead, we squeaked through with full sails until we jubilantly received our finish whistle from the OIYC (oiyc.org) race committee on Nootka Rose (Thank You Betsy Wareham!) to receive 4th place in our division, just 3 seconds ahead of the fifth-place boat on "corrected time."

Boat - J109 Hravn skippered by Todd Koetje of Bellingham, Washington
Crew - Viva, Peter, Larry, MarkK, Olivia, MarkH, and Noah
Camera - GoPro Hero Mini11 in 4K