A4, 2012

Another crazy night for big winds in the Okanagan. What started out as 3 knots out of the North quickly turned into 15 to 20 out of the South during the pre start. One of our biggest challenges was sail selection. With a forecast that called for calming breeze into the overnight we decided to go with our biggest headsail, a 150 genoa. We had a clean start maybe just a little late with good speed but once again an overpowered boat all the way upwind. The breeze was all over the map with huge direction changes and lots of big puffs out on the course. We rounded A mark and went for the spinnaker set. Due to our heavy air kite blowing up on last Wednesday we were down to our .5 oz one and I decided to take a conservative approach and call for the douse. As it turned out it was the right call. Ghost Rider and TBD were the only ones flying their kites down to D mark and it cost them quite a bit of time. We made up all of the distance lost due to our quick set/douse and rounded a short distance back. It was a long beat back to the finish with the genoa out and the crew was constantly working to keep the boat balanced. We finished about 1 minute behind the race leaders GR and about 30 seconds behind TBD. A quick glance over our shoulders we could see Pentameter close behind who most likely got us on corrected time. There is another new boat in A fleet to welcome to the start line, a Martin 242. Sorry I didn't get her name but I will try to notice it next week.

M