Back from Superior!

Recently I had the opportunity to do some racing up on Lake Superior on a Nassau 45 called Integrity. Monday the 2nd the first race started at 11am. We raced from Thunder Bay, Canada to Houghton, MI. We arrived in Houghton around dinnertime on Tuesday the 3rd. Wednesday there were some buoy races on Portage Lake. We decided to just rest up and bum around town, expecting to be starting the next race (Houghton, MI to Bayfield, WI) Thursday AM. However the lift bridge we had crossed under decided to break down and leave us trapped (along with most of the other race boats) on the wrong side. They had to fly an engineer in from NY to look at it and had scheduled some test lifts for 6pm Thursday, so all of the racers got together and circled at the base of the bridge until they decided to "test" lift it high enough for us to escape and start our race. We all agreed to start the race two hours after the bridge lifted. So the second race didn't start until 8pm (9pm local time) on Thursday. It would be a night race. The wind peaked somewhere around 22 knots (much less wind than the day before) and the huge waves were slowing us down. (And making a few of our crew sick). I was able to hold down my cookies, keeping my eyes open all night was harder for me though. I slept for about an hour out of my four hour down time because it was so rough and I kept getting rained on by random hatches which were not properly dogged. We made it to Bayfield in time for a late dinner at the bar on Friday. Saturday we got up and raced for 8 hours amongst the Apostle Islands, had a delicious dinner made by the crew of Chippewa and then drove back home to Hudson, WI in a thunderstorm. We got home around 2:30am. A couple of my friends had yet another leg of driving to do on Sunday so we didn't want to stay the night in Bayfield and make them drive it all in one leg. So it was a crazy sleep deprived week full of beer, rum, and a lot of FUN! I think I am correct to assume that fun was had by all... even the one that was puking all night from Houghton to Bayfield. :P

Poor Felbie will not be pictured below, he was unable to come with me on this trip because of work obligations and a lack of extra vacation time. After hearing of all the fun I have a feeling he may want to go on the next trip!

Taking a nap on the cabin top...
Crushing the competitors sails with my fingers...
Trimming the asmetrical spinnaker...
More crushing... (these photos are in no particular order and I thank Steve N. for bringing his camera to document this trip)...
The long night from Houghton to Bayfield... trimming the spinnaker at dawn... the stripes were making me hallucinate by then...
I had myself wedged in between the mast and the stays because if I sat down to trim I kept falling asleep.
Finally escaping Houghton... the lift bridge is opening!!!
We had plenty of rail meat... originally we were only going to have three people total, myself, Mike and Ron... Mike and I scrambled to find more crew and we ended up with seven total! (The perfect number for this boat.)
Celebrating after the race from Thunder Bay to Houghton... we are in the channel here...
Early AM after bobbing all night in no wind just south of Isle Royale we were greeted by fog and wind! Cooking eggs is challenging when you are standing on the wall because the boat is heeled so far over!
In Thunder Bay the night before the first race... trying out some local beer and vodka cocktails...
Grapefruit Vodka drink I found to be very tasty... and I love the french word for grapefruit.... pamplemousse!
On a fun sail Sunday before the first race (to get to know the boat)... we ended up racing some storms in...