Final Wednesday Night!

Thats it!  I can't believe another summer of Wednesday night races is behind us.  We finished off in fine style tonight with a gentle 5 knot breeze out of the North and a course of CDBDB.  We got off an average start about midline with much better pressure towards the Easter shore and certain death waiting in the duldrums towards the West.  We flipped as soon as we could and headed up to the starboard layline for D mark.  We rounded just behind GR and ahead of Blur.  We gybed as soon as we could and headed back for the better pressure of the Eastern shore.  We played a few shifts and gybed to keep outselves ahead of the pack and quickly found ourselves on starboard gybe on a great layling for the B mark rounding.  My crew pulled off an awesome Mexican douse right at the mark and back up we went.  I wanted to stay right initially but stuck a little closer to the middle with decent pressure all the way up.  We called an early layline in anticipation of a starboard tack lift to the D mark but it never materialized.  Instead we got dying breeze and a header instead.  We lost quite a bit of our lead as we flipped back and forth trying to time the shifts and watched GR and Blur compressing right behind us.  We set the kite and gybed right away and sailed a hot angle back to the Eastern shore in search of better pressure.  It was only one gybe and we were set for a hot angle reach to what was now the finish at B mark.  It will be interesting to see the results but if I predict correctly I think we will take a second about 5 seconds behind Peter on Blur.  It was a great regular season this year however I regret having to split it between two boats.  There is no chance of us getting a podium finish on Eclipse however I do not regret having made the move mid season.  See you all this Sunday!

m

Commodores Cup

It was a great regatta this year. With the exception of a few big windless holes the breeze was steady with enough pressure to keep the fleet moving. See the results page for more details and checkout the Okanagan Sailing Facebook page for further.

Facebook

Just a reminder to all Okanagan sailors. Why not join the Facebook group OkanaganSailing and contribute to the conversation. I will be slowly transferring the blog content over there over the next year.

Marc

D3, 2013

After a whirl wind July it was great to be back in our own backyard for a Wednesday night yacht race. Despite the temperatures well above 30 degrees we didn't see the usual crazy thermal winds but instead enjoyed 5 to 10 knots out of the North with steady pressure and direction. The course was CDADBC and off we went. I really wanted the right side of the course and risked a barging approach to get it. J luffed us up hard below the committee boat and we had to wait for them to sail past before we could put the bow down and squeeze between the M244 and the committee boat but we managed to pull it off. We flipped right away and sailed the short distance before tacking back onto the starboard layline. We rounded 3rd behind J and GR. downwind we could not quite get into the grove with speed and Blur managed to pass us to Port sailing with the other two in slightly better pressure closer to the Eastern shore. We rounded A mark 4th and managed a great beat back to D mark. It was a great drag race on the beat with J just on our right beam for about 10 minutes. I managed to foot for a while till we got the bow out and then work back up just managing to beat them to the D mark with us just behind GR. we hung with GR all the way back down to A must had to settle rounding just on their transom. Beating back to finish at C was a great leg. The boat was pulling strong and we sailed starboard tack all the way till we had to tack to finish close to the pin. GR was off our right so we had to throw in a quick tack and duck before finishing. We finished first 4 seconds ahead of GR but they corrected out a solid 15 seconds ahead and just behind J. An awesome night for some around the can action.

M