At five o’clock, on any Thursday evening during the summer, Mission Bay Yacht Club’s parking lot is jammed. The Thursday Night Thing, aka “TNT,” is a friendly yet very competitive racing series, with spectators and a party afterwards. Each year on the last Thursday in April the series starts and continues full tilt until the final race following the Labor Day weekend. For the last official TNT, we sail the course in reverse, with a downwind start, more a of a pursuit format, and marks to starboard. The final competitors to finish usually make it back to the dock just as the sun is setting. In recent years, the series has continued as the TNT “After Bang” through September, or until we run out of daylight. What started out as a friendly duel in 1970 has grown into a major mid-week affair.
TNTs attract more than 40 boats on average over 20 races, much longer than most beer can series. A diverse handicap keel fleet joins more than a dozen one design dinghy fleets for TNTs, making for some exciting crosses and chaotic mark roundings. The start line is placed in the Mission Bay channel, less than 1000 ft from MBYC’s Junior Building. The first beat is always to the West, around mark set at the top of Santa Barbara Cove, followed by a reach to the South and then a run East back out of the mouth of the cove. In this way all of the competitors pass in front of the deck of the Junior Building twice in the first few legs of the race. Spectators crowd the deck with a cold beverage to watch and cheer on the competitors.
The first start is traditionally at 6 pm and the Race Committee runs rolling three-minute starts, with the faster classes generally starting before the slower ones. Recently, we have allowed some of the slower classes to start earlier, so that they can make it around the course before the sun sets and the wind dies. Once all of the fleets have started, the RC picks up the starting line and heads North, to set a finish line in front of the main clubhouse.
After the final start the throng ashore disperses. Some retire to the beach picnic tables and open baskets spreading the table for the arrival of the hungry sailors. Others find the club bar more to their liking, or head up onto the main patio to watch the await the first finishers.
The racing is competitive – many of us look forward to racing our fleet mates every week, and press on each other on the starting line, but the emphasis is on fun. The handicap keel fleet does a great job of assigning ratings that factor in the prevailing conditions and past performance, so that a variety of different boats have a real chance to win each week, and the corrected times are often very close. There hasn’t been a protest in years, and many of us spend more time hanging out afterwards than we do sailing. TNT also offers Junior Sailors the chance to race with the rest of the fleets, members of our Club Keel Boat Program the opportunity to race one of our Victory 21s, and lots of MBYC sailors bring new crew and old friends on the water for the first time during TNT.
A large fleet streaming downwind past the club in the soft evening light is sight to behold, a calm and beautiful image at the end of a workday. The wind tends to lighten over the course of the race, and sometimes we are just ghosting across the finish line. Once the boats are hoisted out, and everyone has the chance to order food and drinks, trophies are presented, and the party continues.
By ten o'clock all has returned to the domain of the ubiquitous Night Heron and the lonely security guard. And then we do it again the next week.
