I figure folks would be interested in hearing my account of what happened to Dragonfly during the Eagle Island race. I had Casey Pruitt and Sarah Hanavan sailing with me, both experienced dinghy sailors. As we entered Budd Inlet beating against the building southerly, it wasn’t much over ten knots at first. It built as we got into the bay further, soon reaching over 20 and holding. We were still making good progress, but it was challenging. We had to flog both the main and jib in the bigger puffs. Seas were a couple of feet and building. When we were about a mile from the finish we were definitely at the boat’s upper wind limit.

A larger gust hit. Both main and jib were eased immediately and were flogging. The boat capsized anyway. It also turtled without hesitation. I’ve flipped that boat on its side more times than I can remember having sailed in heavy air numerous times in the three and half years I’ve owned it and it’s never gone turtle. Of course I’d never been out in 30 knots before with the Viper, and if I would have known I would see it on Saturday, I wouldn’t have gone out. The front wasn’t expected until after dark according the forecasts I saw.

At any rate, we righted the boat quickly enough, but Sarah got separated. We had to make a couple of passes, but we got her a line and got her back aboard, but in doing so went over again. Finally with some significant struggle, we all got on and took the sails down. By that time a couple of other participants were standing by under power and we gratefully accepted a tow from Bodacious.

Although quite wet and eventually chilled after the inactivity during the tow in, we were all in good shape. We all had on PFD and appropriate wet weather gear. Sarah and I were dressed similarly with layers of synthetics under high-quality foul weather gear. I had on Gill breathable offshore boots while she had on neoprene footwear. Casey was wearing a hybrid combo of 3 mil neoprene under foul weather gear and booties.

I was chatting with Tom Nelson who has the J 35C, and turns out he was monitoring his wind instruments about the time when this happened. He reported a sustained 38 knots. Another individual I spoke with indicated the Olympia Airport reported a peak wind speed of 45 mph. I saw spume just beginning to form on the surface of the water during our tow in. I am confident the wind was consistently over 30 with significantly higher gusts by the time we got our sails down and were towed in. It was blowing so hard J said getting his crew off the deck while we were powering into the wind made a knot difference in boat speed! He said our speed towing us in was 2-3 knots, slower in the gusts.

Rafe Beswick, Dragonfly