This past Wednesday night, Memo Gidley and the Muscle Milk crew were busy trying to tame the wild waters of the San Francisco Bay during the RYC series race in Richmond, CA, and came away with a fifth in class. With a +20knts and issued “small craft advisory” in place, everybody was anxious to let Basic Instinct do what she does best, sail the windy stuff. “I watch the weather before these races and saw early in the week that we were going to be in for some wind,” said Gidley. “Honestly, I was very excited to the point that I could not wait to get out there…making it hard for me to sleep nights before the race.”
Gidley assembled a crew consisting of sailors and racers and signed on a total of eight people to help with the goal of winning. “It is very interesting how many similarities there are between sail boat racing and car racers,” said Gidley. “I had crew that consisted of one well known long time sailor, another past race car driver, race mechanics, my Mom, and even one of my guys from my ALMS team Pickett Racing. It’s a real team sport and instead of fighting for tenths of a second on a race track, here we are fighting for tenths of a knot of boat speed…very challenging.”
The high winds brought out a number of 40ft race boats, and even though Basic Instinct just comes across at 34ft, she can still go head to head against larger boats that are normally faster by size alone.
Basic Instinct and the Muscle Milk crew, got off to a slow start across the line, but steadily got in a groove and really came on strong for the last downwind leg. “With the combo of the wind and some new people on the boat, it took us a little too much time to get into our groove,” said Gidley. “This and the fact that I did not nail the start meant we had some catching up to do. But, once we rounded that final mark we were railing on the downwind run, surfing the boat a lot of the time. I can’t wait to up our game for the race next Wednesday.”