Greetings race fans,

We wanted to send out a quick update to let you know what we've been up to and what's next on the horizon. This coming weekend, October 29-30, we have our first major event of the 2006 season. We will be racing in San Francisco in the St. Francis Fall Dinghy Regatta, which is the first of three qualifying events for the 2006 US Sailing Team. In addition to determining funding levels, this year's US Sailing Team rankings will also dictate which teams qualify to compete in the Olympic Test Event in China and the ISAF World Games in Austria.

We've been busy this fall preparing for the event. We've done a substantial amount of work on the boat to get it ready, including rigging two new masts and fixing the boom that notoriously cost us the last two races of the Worlds. In the process of repairing it, we discovered a hairline crack in the boom, which could cause it to break eventually. So we've decided to retire that boom and its bad karma, and have rigged up another one.

This past weekend we had an opportunity to practice out of St. Francis Yacht Club (the regatta venue) with two other US Sailing Team boats - Clark/Mergenthaler and McNay/Biehl. We had great conditions both days and were able to test some of our repairs and experiment with new lines from Samson, our newest sponsor! It also gave us an opportunity to look at our new sails from North, which we are planning to use next weekend. Our speed was good compared to the other teams, and we feel confident going into next weekend's race.

We'd like to take a moment to quickly thank our sponsors, RBS Greenwich Capital and Samson Ropes. And a special thanks to the Stanford Sailing Team for their help with coach boats, storage, power tools, and moral support while we've been in San Francisco.

And finally, we have posted photos from the North American and World Championships this past August on our website. You can find them at www.470TeamUSA.com by clicking on the "photos" link.

Best,
Erin and Alice