Not racing on Friday had the star fleet anxious for two races on Saturday regardless of forecast. Twenty knot westerly breeze filled into Biscayne Bay for the first of two scheduled races. The blast reach out to the race course barely gave us a taste of what we would see in the day’s race. Chris and I set the boat up for big breeze and got our angles sorted out but were quickly nulified by a 20 degree swing to the left right as the gun went off. We flopped onto port tack and essentially fetched the windward mark some 2 miles later. Because of the massive lefty the first reach of the triangle windward leeward course (something I hadn’t seen in the star but apparently not uncommon for windy weather) was a very tight angle. Th second reach was almost dead downwind wreaking havoc on the fleet. Race leaders Peter Bromby and Magnus Liljedahl lost their mast along with four other boats during one of the windiest puffs of the day later on that leg. Chris and I had a nice race going slicing and dicing out way into the top ten but gave away about five boats in a nasty shift sequence at the top of the last beat. We were only able to pick up one on the downwind to finish 14th in the race. Unfortunately the RC decided to send the fleet in after one race probably due to the fact that they had lost 5 safety boats keeping track of the broken boats.
After dropping our Black Flag Chris and I moved up the leaderboard to 13th place overall. Not a bad finish considering the circumstances of out last minute crew mixup and our early starting penalty. Man would we love to have that race back considering how well we were going in the light air.
Full results at www.MiamiSailingWeek.com.
Next on the calendar is a US team training camp in Colorado Springs this coming weekend. I’ll go straight from there to Long Beach to sail the Congressional Cup match race regatta. The schedule refuses to let up, I’m excited for the next challenge.
Thanks to John Payne for the photo. Also many thanks to Sperry Top-Sider, North Sails, Kaenon Polarized, Team McLube and US Sailing Team Alphagraphics for their support.
Huy N
Love the blow by blow report. Keep it up.
