Racing the doldrums

Our first race in the Regatta was by far the most “ interesting “and challenging race I’ve ever been in.
We had Steve, a diehard ‘Stink-potter’ , and Amy , an experienced all women’s crew racer, on board , so I’d figured a little extra muscle and racing experience leave us in good shape . Little did I know ….
It started with the search for the committee boat and said search never ended !?!?!?
Would you believe it , we eventually found the orange start line mark and Amy , who’d done this Regatta before , assured us to look for a powerboat with an orange flag .
Oh well, we had the start mark , so if we could only look for boats with yellow ribbons , the sign of the Mothertub-class , we’d be in good shape . One skipper assured us we hadn’t started the race yet , another said we were on , and all of the sudden there was ‘Abaco Glow’ ,a high-profile race -boat, struggling to keep their spot on the startline and I was seriously squeezing them out of their position and so tight on them- what a thrill !!! Especially since I thought I hadn’t started yet and was ruining their all- year -anticipated effort for them, so I let them go and tacked. After the race , Steve admitted he wanted to scream, but when he saw me calm on the helm ,he didn’t want to be the first one to freak out , and we all had a good laugh over that moment .Well, as soon as ’AB’ passed us I saw the yellow ribbon on their backstay and made a 360’ around the mark and followed them .Not having found the committee boat , we’d never seen the course board either , but that turned out to be no problem, for “Quixotic” ,our mother tub ,wouldn’t point upwind at all and we soon fell way behind the rest of the fleet. Soon we popped the first beers and were just about to turn on the stereo when we got close to the first mark and into complete doldrums . Now let me ask you if any of you ever tried to sail a heavy boat as ours at 0.7 knots and then tried to tack her . Talking about some whiteknuckle sailing , concentrating on every little move she made , I was pretty stressed out , while the rest of the crew slowly but surely passed out on me .We eventually called our ’Iron Genny’ to the rescue and motored back home ,so we could make it to the award ceremony that evening . ’Abaco Glow’ did win first price that day and we regretted we ruined their effort to beat their last years time . Only a couple of races later the skipper of their boat Sean approached me to compliment me on my move that day .His words said a lot about the race that day : We were so jeaulous, for you were in the position we wanted to be in and we were quite impressed ,until you fell off and we realized she also didn’t know what was going on .
So imagine you in a race , you don’t know where the startline is , you don’t know when you start and you don’t know the course !?!? Unbelievable …..

P.S. Crossing the Finish line we found the Comitteboat to be a big sailboat ,duuuuh….