Race 1

Started the day at 0900 with our weather briefing with Ed. We expected a persistent right trend throughout the day.

We opted to sail to the course instead of a tow since we had a beam reach and arrived there about an hour before the warning. We tuned with Bill Hardesty and then went into nerve calming mode before the start.

The pin end was favored, not because of line bias, but more because we wanted to get right. Rather that fight it out there, we elected to to go for a top third of the line start. We had a good line position but had to tack to clear 45 sec after the start.

We worked the middle of the course and got hung out a little on the left side in a right trend. It gets really busy at the weather mark -- fat laylines become no laylines, etc. We rounded the first mark in 51st.

We gybed right at the mark, caught a couple of boats and lost a couple of boats on the run. It was really lumpy so we elected to use the VMG kite. At the leeward gate, we picked a left turn and pressed out on port.

Our upwind speed continues to be pretty good and we picked off a few boats on the weather leg.
At the second weather mark, we elected to do a bear away. An Aussie boat tried to mow over us to weather, but using our Bellingham skills, we made him pay and dove down to a gybe.

Most of the downwind leg was ugly -- lump, lighter winds, etc. We sailed the long port gybe and flipped to starboard about 500 yds from the finish. We ended up in 47th, a little below mid fleet. All things considered, we felt pretty good about the first race. Bill Hardesty, our tuning partner ended up in 7th, well positioned for the rest of the regatta.

Time for a glass of wine..............