Greetings race fans,

Today was another good day for us. After waiting ashore again for the wind to fill, we finally started racing a little after noon. The breeze filled in to about 8-12 knots and the fog stayed away, making for a perfect day for sailing. Because of daylight savings we had essentially the same current pattern as yesterday – a strong ebb (going upwind) all day, starting to taper off towards the end of the day.

We spent the first race battling it out with the other top three boats, and in the end we managed to pull ahead at the finish to take first in the race. Clark/Mergenthaler (the 2nd place women’s boat) finished right behind us with Anderson/Hughes (tied with us going into the day) in third. The second race was reminiscent of yesterday’s last race. The pin end was favored, but most of the fleet was still starting at the boat end to try to get to the right side of the course. We started at the pin on port with Anderson/Hughes just below us. They were a little faster than us and managed to pull ahead by the windward mark. Our speed wasn’t great for the remainder of the race, either upwind or downwind, and we ended up finishing third behind Clark/Mergenthaler.

Going into the last race we were tied with Anderson/Hughes for first place. The sailing instructions specified that after five races you get to drop your lowest score, so we knew we were guaranteed to be at least second overall and the first women’s team. The pin end was favored again at the start, but this time there was a bigger crowd. We were the second boat up from the pin, just above McNay/Biehl. At the gun we ended up being too close to them, so when Biehl extended on the trapeze wire our jib hit him. We had to do a 720-degree turn to clear ourselves, which put us pretty far back in the fleet. We had changed some of our settings between races and our speed was much better. By the first mark we had managed to pull ourselves up to mid-fleet, although the leaders were fairly far ahead. Anderson/Huges were leading the race, which made our chances of winning the regatta look pretty slim. On the run we decided to take a gamble and, instead of following the fleet inshore for relief from the current, we decided to gybe away from shore to sail into more wind and bigger waves. Our gamble paid off and we gained on the leaders, rounding the leeward mark in third about 150 feet behind McNay/Biehl. The upwind leg had very few passing lanes, and we all rounded the windward mark in the same positions. Based on our success the prior run, there was no question which way we were going to go. We were pleasantly surprised to see Anderson/Hughes and McNay/Biehl head for the shore line again, since our only chance to catch them was to split gybes and go to opposite sides. Again it paid to go for more wind and we ended up winning the race by a sizeable margin, which put us in first overall for the regatta.

We’re excited about our success at this event and the progress we made with our boat handling and equipment. The boat is now on its way to Miami, where we’ll be training and racing whenever we can this winter. Our next regatta will be January 14-16 and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to race in a bigger fleet against some strong international teams.

Thanks for all of your support!!

Cheers,
Erin & Alice