Does condensed milk come from condensed cows?
2004-06-24

The brezze was fading fast as wind from the west is prone to do around here. The race commitee promised a short managable course and for once they delivered, up, down up, 3.27 miles total. The plusses, it was warm, dry and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. That sort of offset the lack of wind.

They set up the line in a corner of the bay that we never use because it gets really shallow quickly. Everybody was kind of afraid to go to far in at the boat end of the line and the chaos that was the A start proved that point quite nicely.

You learn a lot of lessons watching the start before yours and patterns usually develop. Here it was everybody is going to be early and there will be lots of yelling and screaming. My plan was try to avoid both.

When it came our turn to play, we hung out left until the very last minute. People were trying to stall their boats, but they just kept drifting down the line and we had the favored boat end all to ourselves moving at full speed, right at the gun. Sweet, our best start of the year.

Light air is not our condition of choice. My boat is one of the heaviest in the fleet. We try not to tack alot, but they way the course was set up, we didn't have much of a choice. We milked the wind line for all we could until the water ran out and then we'd tack. Then repeat as necessary. It was necessary a lot.

A couple of boats took a flyer way left. It almost never pays off. This time it did, they were way ahead by the time we reached the weather mark. The race committee from the inside circle of racers had the same idea as our circle and sent their boats out while we were going in. That meant 50 boats in 4 different classes crossing tacks and trying not to hit each other. We came within inches a few times, fun, fun, fun.

On the down hill ride we passed a few boats and headed back upwind in the ever lightning breeze. We were third boat to finish, and corrected out 4th of 12. Not great but I was satisfied. We did our best in not our best conditions. We rolled up the jib and sailed (well mostly drifted) for another hour and watched the sun set over a few cold ones. By the time we got in, the launch was mostly done picking up the crews and we didn't have to wait. Sweet.

Today I have absolutely no plans. M.E. is goping out with the girls tonight and I have no clue as to what I am going to do to keep myself occupied. I might go to newport to watch the cup boats. I might not. Any way, happy Thursday!

Later

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