Another beautiful wind filled night for a yacht race. We had a full crew of 5 on board tonight with Aaron (the beard) helming, Tracy on trim, Belazs in the pit and David on bow. By the time the starting gun sounded the breeze had filled in to a steady 15 knots right out of the South. We fought hard for the pin but manage to let Pentameter and J29 wedge in just to windward of us. Fortunately Pentameter was taking quite a bit of dirt from J and got spit out the back. We held our own only having to throw in one tack on the first beat to "A" mark and rounded just behind J. We have done quite a bit of work trying to master the gybe set on the sprit boat and it is finally starting to pay off. We gybed and did a quick hoist and managed to stay right of the transom of J all the way down to "D" mark. Not much changed on our beat back to "A" mark but things did get somewhat interesting on the final run back to "C". We were overtaking J on port tack to windward and they gave us some hard luffs which caused us to broach. Once we got back on our feet we had to fight for our rights to room to pass starboard tack boats to windward of J but to leward of the upwind starboard tackers. We had a solid douse at "C" mark and rounded about 1 boat length ahead of J. We manage to hold them off all the way to the finish line but they did manage to finish inside of 1 boat length behind us, very close indeed. It was a great night for a sailboat race and I think the fleet is sailing very well indeed.
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