Greetings race fans,

Today was the first day of the St. Francis Olympic Classes Regatta, the first of three ranking events for the 2006 US Sailing Team. Skipping to the punch line, we’re winning the regatta after today’s two races.

After a brief onshore postponement waiting for wind and a three hour postponement on the water waiting for the fog to clear enough to make the marks visible, we finally got racing around 3:30 pm. The 470s had a surprisingly good turnout this weekend and there are 11 boats in our fleet (men and women are combined), four of which are currently on the US Sailing Team.

For the first race we had about 10 knots of wind and an ebb tide. The race committee had moved us from the middle of the bay, where we raced the Worlds, to the shoreline between Alcatraz and the piers. This made the right side of the course significantly favored upwind since it had more wind and more favorable current. We started at the right end of the line and quickly made our way to the right side of the course. Our speed wasn’t great, and we ended up rounding the mark 4th, behind the other three USST boats, despite a good start and solid tactics. The course was a windward-leeward three times around, so we had plenty of time to try to catch up. We eventually passed Clark/Mergenthaler (currently the #1 ranked women’s boat on the USST) downwind and held on to finish the race in third.

The wind had died down slightly for the second race, and shortly before our start it shifted to the left. The current had also slacked off, making the course more even. The left shift made the left end of the line favored, but most of the fleet lined up to start at the right end expecting the right side of the course to be favored again. We won the left end of the line and tacked right after the start to cross the entire fleet. Clark/Mergenthaler had started just behind us and crossed the fleet as well. The remainder of the race was a duel between us and Clark/Mergenthaler. We were faster upwind, but they were faster downwind. In the end we held on to finish in front of them and win the race.

With finishes of 1st and 3rd, we are currently tied with Anderson/Hughes, the top ranked US men’s team, for first in the regatta (we win the tie-breaker). Clark/Mergenthaler are two points back in third. We have three races scheduled tomorrow and feel great about the boat and how we are sailing. We still have a lot to learn about our new sails to optimize their performance, but we have a good feel for them now and are confident we can keep improving our speed with them. With three more good races tomorrow the 2006 season will be off to a great start.

The complete results from today are included below, and you can find updated results tomorrow at www.stfyc.com.

Cheers,
Erin & Alice