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Friday, September 4, 2009

Icon Wins Northern Century...

On August 28-29, Icon competed in the 2nd running of the Northern Century. The Northern Century is a grueling yacht race (mostly at night) that runs from Anacortes to Point Roberts, Stuart Island (Turn Point), Hein Bank (in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca) and then home to Anacortes.

The race started at 7:30pm Friday night with two divisions - a double-handed division (we came third in this event last year with Schussboomer), and a fully-crewed division. Icon competed in the fully-crewed division.

The winds were light at the start, but gradually built to 15-20 knots. We ran the A1 and upshifted to the A2 for the run to Pt. Roberts at ~15knots boatspeed. At Point Roberts we changed to the J2 and beat to East Point in moderate winds. At East Point the wind started to go light and we upshifted to the J1 and reached down Boundary Passage. At Turn Point we footed over the the Canadian side of Haro Strait with numerous light spots to avoid.

Just east of Discovery Island we managed to catch the building westerly and put up the A2 and ran down to Hein Bank. At the bank we wrapped a bunch of kelp around the keel and rudder. We should have backed down immediately, but we struggled home with it flapping on the hull.

From Hein Bank we ran our angles to Davidson Rock and then onto the finish off Shannon Point in light winds. We finished at 8:54 am to a nice sunrise with an elapsed time of 13:14:30; narrowly correcting in front of the C&C 110 (like Schussboomer) with a final time of 15:09:30.

Great trip and thanks to Ian/Joy for preparing the boat and the crew for making it go...