Jul 06 2010
Quick and Daring
The 4th of July holiday has passed us by and we, the crew of the tall-ship ‘Lady Washington’ survived it. Saturday the captain of the ’Hawaiian Chiefton’ and I built a boat in about 2 hours for the Quick and Daring race, and then passed the torch to crew members for refinements so we could get underway for our afternoon charters with the big boats. When we returned in the evening I was not satisfied with the water-tight integrity of the hull, so I reinforced it with duct tape. One of my crew stayed late to paint the boat and by dark she looked great and ready to race.
Sunday, the 4th dawned and I discovered that the solvents in the paint had attacked the duct tape, it was all falling off. I quickly borrowed a staple gun and fastened the tape with staples. We had a morning charter and a battle sail in the afternoon. By the afternoon Lake union was a zoo. They had blocked off half the lake with the fireworks barge and safety perimeter and the other half was filled with drinking boaters at anchor. I have sailed through ridiculously crowded anchorages before, but not with a 208 ton tall-ship. There were some close calls, and I mean CLOSE.
Toward the end of our battle-sail, wherein Captain Jimmy of the ‘Chiefton’ and I teamed up against the drunken anchorage, which we called the ‘Jimmy Buffet Fleet’, the Quick and Daring race began. We had each left a crew member behind to race the boat we had built so we left off firing on the anchorage and proceeded to the race course for the Quick and Daring. The fleet of quick built dingies got off the line and our boat and crew was fast downwind, no matter where they wanted to go. They struggled with the second leg of the three leg course, so we swooped in with the 112′ Brig and towed them upwind to the finish, while barging the course and firing cannons at the rest of the fleet. They disqualified us for cheating, but we cheated with style and everyone seemed to enjoy the show and the spirit of fun. Later, at 8:pm, we got underway a for a third time that day with a group of spectators aboard for the fireworks show, which didn’t start until 10:15pm. The show was fantastic but the traffic was fully insane. We somehow made it back to the dock without any collisions just before midnight. It was an 18 hour day for all aboard, but fun just the same.
Next weekend we have a Pirate-themed wedding, a ‘Make a Wish’ charter and more battle sailing. We’ll be doing dockside tours, maintenance, and afternoon adventure sails until then. The Center for Wooden Boats has been a great host and there certainly were some lovely boats here throughout the weekend festival. On tuesdays they hold the Lake Union Duck Dodge, a version of Beer-can racing. On wednesdays the power boats come out en mass for a Drink and Drift type of gathering. All of this with sea-planes coming and going, it’s quite a show.