Practice Race

We made weight this morning by 11 kg, dressed! Lots of crews stripped to their scanties trying to get the last gram off.

We had a weather briefing with Ed before heading our to the course. We had a couple of significant storm cells pass through -- no lightning. You sail to the cell to get whatever spin is there and then get away from it as fast as you can to avoid the trailing lull. Today, we saw a prevailing right shift.

The RC gave us 2 practice starts and then (tried) to go with a full start. During the first start, oh, about 50 boats were OCS. The second practice start was a little better. The first real start was a general recall with most of the fleet over. When we finally did start, the RC called 25 OCS and let the race go. There are no long runways on the line. You have to find/build your very small hole, hold it for 30-45 seconds and then pull the trigger just before the guys above and below you. We were mostly front row, but it's hard to hold the lane after the start.

Joyce is working on the RC signal boat in the center of the line can occasionally snap a couple of quick shots like above.

We sailed the first weather leg in pretty good company. Boat speed and point are good, but finding your way through the traffic can be difficult. We rounded the top mark somewhere in the middle. Our first run was SLOW. We found what we thought was a long clear lane in the middle, but is was slow. Looking back, we should probably have run hotter and sailed the edges. We made it through the leeward gate cleanly and sailed about half the upwind finish leg before breaking off to do some more spinnaker work.

It's showtime tomorrow!