A3, 2014

Tonight was a little on the light side but the beautiful sunny skies and 27 degrees sure helped make up for a lack of stronger winds. We had a very shifty breeze that ranged from Westerly to Northerly with steady oscillation back and forth. The posted course was CDBDBC. During the last couple of minutes of the prestart the line showed quite a heavy pin end favour and we led the pack back towards the pin starting next to Blur. We had hoped to be able to pull away and tack but they showed great speed and pinned us sailing almost right to the port tack layline. We tacked simultaneously with them and managed to pull ahead enough to allow us to be just ahead of them on the starboard tack layline. It was a busy rounding at D mark with a tack, gybe set pulled off amazingly well by our crew. We fought hard to set up on port gybe above the layline to try to keep clear air while sailing towards better pressure on the Eastern shore. We gybed on what looked like a good angle to hold a reaching angle towards B mark but found the wind continuously coming forward and wouldn't you know it we were once again beating with the kite up. We had elected to go with the A1 reaching kite tonight and were sure glad we had. We doused at B mark and tried to sail fast back to the East shore. This leg was the hardest to sail well tonight with very shifty breeze and tons of dirt from whole fleets on the run. We did manage to once again poke our nose into better pressure and squirt ahead to D mark. Another quick gybe set and reach down hill. The big move that probably won us the race tonight was gybing much sooner in anticipation of the big header that we had experienced on the previous leg. It was not as pronounced but it did arrive on cue and gave us the perfect angle to reach at about 6 knots for the finish at B mark. Blur finished less than 3 minutes behind us with GR and J not far behind. It looked like the breeze shut off almost completely after that leaving several boats from all fleets bobbing helplessly in the evening setting sun. I am sure looking forward to sailing the Blossom Time Regatta this weekend at the KYC and hope to see everyone out there for this exciting event.