WINGSSAIL

wingssail images-fredrick roswold

The crew was unusually jubilant after the 2020 Banderas Bay Blast.

I mean, how often do they hang around for an hour after the race draped over the boom drinking Irish Whisky and laughing about how good it was?

And it was good: not only did we get first place finishes in both of the two days (three, if you count the Mita and Back Challenge which we also won the week before) but on this race we put time on all of the boats, even the fastest of them. Some would call it a horizon job.

But it was not just the winning. This crew is working hard and doing well and they feel it. Sailing on this boat requires team effort. Ten jobs, ten people, and they all must work together. When they do the boat just clicks. That is what makes sailing great. Of course winning is the best fun, but having good team work feels good whether we win or not. When you do both, it is really satisfying.

Then there is the experience level of this team. This year when several of our regular Canadian crew couldn’t come to Mexico we found ourselves short.

We put out the call,

“Wings is looking for crew.”

People started walking down the dock, “I hear you’re looking for crew?”

“Yeah, we are, come on aboard.”

And in that way Judy and I picked up five more experienced sailors to add to our strong core of Richard, Lynne, Rena, Kelly and Terry. Several of the new people (scroll down) have solid racing experience. We’ve done well in past years with people we’ve trained from scratch, but now we’ve got more people who know what they are doing and, more than that, they aren’t afraid to speak up about how we can improve. Sometimes those suggestions come out a little sharply but we love it.

valkyrie images-david eberhard

Trimming In

Let’s talk about the Banderas Bay Blast. There are lots of races here each year but the Banderas Bay Blast is our favorite one and the one in which we typically do the best. We’ve been sailing it every December since 2015. Usually it is a triangle race here in La Cruz on day one, then a sail to Punta Mita on day two, a stay over, and a sail back to Nuevo Vallarta on day three. This year we did all three legs in two days. If you add the Mita and Back Challenge we also did this year, that is 18 individual races. We won 10, got 6 seconds, and 2 thirds. I guess it is a pretty good record and we’re proud of it. This year, with the increased competition and the huge margin of victory, we feel especially good about it.

We’ve also gotten faster over the years. Our times, all carefully logged, have simply gotten better and better. The longest it’s taken us was 1 hour and 48 minutes (other than 2017 when the wind died and it took 5 hours) and now we are down to 1 hour and 33 minutes.

cayuse images-jill peterson

Wings and the Bay

What about next year? Somebody may come out and beat us. That will be OK. If they do it because we screwed up, then we’ll have a lesson and hopefully we can learn from it. If we sail well and still lose, we’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that we did the best we could.

And anyhow, it’s all sailboat racing, and it’s all good.

wingssail images-bernard saggest