Tom and Talia Bring us a Second

OK, so you won't see Tom Cawrse or Talia Cawrse Esarey on the crew list all that often.  But on a shifty day like Saturday's Blakely rock benefit Regatta, youth and experience are a potent combination.  With a combined age of less than 75, they average out in the middle of the normal Kotuku crew range.  Except that Tali just turned 5.

Against my better judgement I entered Kotuku in the Blakely Benefit Regatta after my mom said
"Sure we'd like to go sailing."  Janna's folks were game too even though their daughter was up on Whidbey Island for a 4 day writer's conference.

So after realizing that it wasn't going to rain too hard, and after racing back to the house to get the dacron #2 because the #1 was in the sail loft we loaded up the girls from 2 to 67, plus the dads from well, let's just say old to older, and headed out to the race course.

We got a nice conservative start with decent boat speed, crossed the line first with Eye Candy above us sailing higher and faster.  (It was light, and this was a family race for God's sake!).  We tacked and crossed the fleet resolved to follow Eye Candy.  Turns out even with Tom driving well and us tacking furiously we just didn't have the power in the light stuff to stay with them.  We sure did miss having the #1...

We rounded Blakely Rock second, which was nice for a change, and proceeded to sail into a monster hole.

Pretty much the entire fleet caught up to us under spinnaker while we flopped around with our "windseeker"  (aka the #2).  Luckily the wind died for most of them at West Point, and we had a hard slow beat back against tide and light fickle breezes.  But we got there, drifting across the line more than an hour after Eye Candy crossed.  Tom drove most of the way, but Talia did a couple of the final tacks to the committee boat, and we crossed the line with three generations of sailors smiling and exhausted.  We all slept well last night.

Best part of the evening was when Burke texted us with the pleasant news that the family effort, while not pretty, was good enough for 2nd in our class.  That was a nice bonus, appreciated by all.  Except Talia of course.  "Second again Dad, can't we do better?"

Where does she get that anyway?