Greetings race fans,

Today was the first day of the 470 North American Championship in Miami. We arrived late last night to find a forecast of “windy” for today, which usually means that the Weather Channel has determined that it’s going to be windier than 20 mph but can’t imagine that anyone would care exactly how much windier it will be. Judging by the outcome of today’s sailing, several members of the fleet would have been extremely interested in knowing exactly how windy it was going to be.

From behind the deceptively calm wind shadow of the sailing center, the fleet launched for the downwind sail to the race course. There are about 25 boats racing, including the current Women’s World Champions, several other top international teams, and all of the top US teams. But even this fleet’s experience was no match for the breeze we found out on the race course. We set the spinnaker for the sail to the starting line and at first everything was fine. But as we emerged from the shadow of the shore, the breeze built to a steady 25 knots and we decided to drop the spinnaker for the reach to the line. The take down unfortunately didn’t go as planned. A puff hit and without Alice’s weight on the trapeze Erin was unable to bear off enough to keep the boat from capsizing. We recovered quickly and were making our way back to the starting area when we saw the remainder of the fleet sailing upwind towards us. Knowing that it was too early for them to have started, we were fairly confident the race committee had sent the fleet in because of the high wind velocity. We couldn’t resist the voyeuristic urge to watch the carnage that was taking place in the rest of the fleet, so we tried to reach across the course area with our sails eased. To give you an idea of how windy it was (we think it was 30-35 knots), without our sails trimmed in we were nearly knocked down several times by huge puffs of wind – even when Alice went out on the trapeze wire to keep the boat upright!

Once we realized the racing had been cancelled, we made our way to shore where the costliness of today’s brief sail for many other competitors became apparent. At least four teams broke or bent their masts, several took large chunks out of their centerboards when the crew’s trapeze harness fell on it during a capsize, and about a half dozen sails won’t be seeing racing action again. We feel pretty good that at least we didn’t break anything today!

With most of the afternoon now free, we decided to do a little boat work to get it in even better shape for tomorrow. While many teams were mourning the loss of key pieces of rigging and sails, we took the opportunity to buff the bottom of the boat! After an acetone bath, some wet sanding, and a coat of Teflon polish, we feel confident we have one of the nicest bottoms in the fleet.

Tomorrow’s forecast is for 12-15 mph, so we should get in some great racing. Thanks for all of your support!!!

Cheers,
Erin & Alice