A2, 2014

After a day of steady breeze out of the North at about 10 knots the wind showed some serious signs of letting up and dying. At about 3 minutes to the start it filled in nicely allowing the fleet to set up in good breeze for the quick beat from C to D mark. We had a great start right on the line with speed just behind Woohoo who found themselves over early by a length or two. They had to peel off and dip the line in order to restart leaving us a nice big fat lane to sail in. Our only concern was putting enough distance between Shadowfax and us to be able to tack up to the layline for the D mark rounding. We rounded first and did a quick gybe set heading back for the East shore where it looked like better pressure was to be found. We had to pick our way through 2 fleets worth of traffic, most of whom had rights on us. Weirdest thing I saw tonight had to be looking back at Blur and having flashbacks to the 1980 caused by the look of their kite. They had the halyard and tackline way loose and it made the kite look like a blooper from the golden days of sailing. Weirdest thing was they were hauling ass. They were not pointing as high as us and still had tons of boat speed on us downwind. We managed to hold them off and gybe ahead of them leading them back down to B mark. The breeze started getting all squirrelly and we found ourselves beating with the kite up rounding B. We tried to keep the kite and gybe around B which worked for a very short while before forcing us to douse and reach for the better breeze nearest the Eastern shore. It was this leg that set us up to really stretch out. Most everyone had rounded B behind and beat right up the middle of the lake while we sailed a much lower angle reaching to the East. We nosed into the better pressure and doubled our boat speed. We took it right to the layline narrowly avoiding shallow water near the light house. We sailed the next down and back identically to the first with the exception of dousing at B mark the second time around. I haven't seen the results yet but with a little luck I think we should cover the spread. The new Melges 24 "Full Moon" made their first fully crewed appearance tonight and showed great bursts of speed including rounding the D mark 3rd after the first beat. Blur was crazy fast as always and J and GR were just slightly behind the leaders. All in all another great day of sailing in the Okanagan.