C3, 2011

It was a wonderful night for a yacht race, if you like broaching and torn kites. Well that might be a little bit of an exaggeration but you get the point. We had a solid 10 to 15 kts of Southerly breeze and some pretty good waves for our little race area. The course as posted was SADCDF and promised lots of running and beating. The pin was the heavily favored end and the boats stacked up as expected trying to get the jump on the fleet. It got so hairy and congested that a general recall was declared and our fleet 1 start moved to the back of the sequence. The second start had the boats much more evenly spaced out and we were able to get off a clean start. We tacked over to port after suffering in bad air almost immediately and started to regain some lost ground. After hoisting the kite with a bear away set we threw in a quick jibe and almost immediately broached. It was my first broach on this boat and was quite uneventful. It was living on the edge for the entire reach to D mark trying to sail to the layline without spinning out of control. We spotted a huge puff behind us and made the correct decision to douse early and jib reach the last minute or so to D mark. Once we hit D mark it was an uneventful course to CD and F. We did lots of fast beating with the boat fully powered up and were very happy with our boat speed both upwind and downwind. It was the kind of night that teamwork either made it or broke it. Congratulations to GHOST RIDER for another first place win, managing to stay a minute or so out ahead of us on the final leg.