Imagine being in a big dark room with lights streaking in front and behind you as you navigate the start. That was the feeling at the 2018 NSC Midnight Madness race on 17 August, the race that is held in the dark! Excellent turn-out this year. The wind was constant at around 10 kn with some good gusts to keep the crew on their toes. An added feature to our start line this year, was the Committee Boat decked out with a disco ball from the 70’s boasting an over the top light set up, and I might add, a very enthusiastic race committee comprising two of our race bosuns.
Congrats to Ross Ernst on Snoekie for the win, followed by Thumper from BYC.
Our bow spotter was the youngest member of our crew sporting a Mustang life vest, whistle and flashlight and as a bonus…is a marathon swimmer; this is an important prerequisite for our spotter position. The rest of the crew was a galley runner to provide refreshments and three in the cockpit to manage the Main and the Genoa.
The start was a broad reach on the racing circle and the course went from C up to G, back to G, finishing at C. Find them on the Lac Deschenes chart. We made it over the start line in the middle of the pack, one of the boats in front was Snoekie with her solar paneled Christmas tree lights, up there was Thumper (BYC), Xel-Ha and Wadjet.
As we settled in for the first leg everything was going fine until we were hit with a gust that overpowered the rudder and we were forced into a roundup situation. Now this wasn’t good, but hey, we are racing in the dark and nobody would have seen it except we had 60ft of Blue LED lighting covering the boat. Once we were three quarters the way through our first leg we inched up on another boat – Jalapeno, who were complaining about our speed (trying to sneak up on them quickly). This was short lived as they accelerated and then disappeared into the darkness.
By now we had four boats coming at us from G mark with Bow navigation lights blazing, more exciting for me was I had to rely on my Marathon Swimmer to guide us through to the G mark. Once past the first mark things settled down to around 5-6 knots boat speed. On the second leg we passed Gypsea, Invictus and Warrior with some amazing lighting configurations.
On the last leg we headed to the Disco ball and the sound of ABBA to complete this year’s Midnight Madness Race.
Thanks to all the great participants and (John) Race committee for a great exciting race.
Complete results are on the NSC race results page – look under Long Distance & Other Weekend Events.
See you next year!!
Caprice 2000 (David Morralee)
Midnight Madness organizer