Today definitely DID NOT go as planned. The wind forecast for today was for a stronger 10-15 knot breeze in the morning dying off to a steady 10 knots as the day went on, but mother nature decided to not stick the plan and gave us a steady 10-15 knot breeze with some bigger gusts. The first race today was going well until the kite run downwind where we overstood the downwind mark. We dumped the traveler and kept pushing ourselves to keep the boat sailing high but we still couldn't make the mark. As soon as we decided to douse the kite we stuffed the bows and had one crazy pitchpole, with Erick flying completely around the bow and the sterns in the air for a bit. After about 10 minutes we finally got the kite doused and the boat unflipped but by that time the fleet was finishing. The next race came around and we were in a pretty good position in the top 10 when, while jibing and dousing the kite at the leeward gate mark, the spinnaker got wrapped around the end of the spin pole. We had to jibe back and as I went out to the bow to fix this mess the pole snapped because of the kite dragging in the water. After another 20 minutes I finally got the kite back in the bag and with a broker spin pole we decided it was time to go in.
Not surprisingly we weren't the only ones with broken equipment! Another boat had a broken spin halyard and John Casey had been involved in a collision (I'm sure others had smaller technical failures). Today unfortunately may have been the most expensive day of the regatta! Overall, this trip has been a great learning experience. We worked extremely hard all weekend and it shows in our results from the past two days, excluding today's 4 DNF's. The most important skills I have worked on this weekend would have to be starts in a bigger fleet. With 26 boats on the line, our timing and boatspeed had to be perfect in order to get off the line in the first row and to pull away from the fleet with some of the more experienced teams. This event has been a memorable one and I will definitely consider coming up here to Hyannis to race next year!
Check out the final results here! (Bad last 4 races on day 3...)
Today was the first Saturday practice of the year for the Sarasota Youth Sailing race teams, yet it was still spent preparing for Isaac! Today the Green, Red-White-Blue, Laser, and 420 teams all participated in derigging the program's boats and storing them away from potentially dangerous areas. 5 multihulls, 4 J22's, and tons of 420s and Opti's were secured for the storm. This "preparation work-party" was a very good team building activity between the different members of the various fleets involved in the race team. I also packed up my multihull to bring it home and keep it safe from the wrath of mother nature. Now all we have to do is wait out the storm and quickly rig up all the boats for the Labor Day Regatta at the Sarasota Sailing Squadron next weekend!
We started our long drive home this past Monday and ended up stopping in Maryland near the D.C. area to visit some of my relatives. While we were there we saw some pretty neat landmarks, including the White House, the Washington Monument, and we even got to visit the International Spy Museum. Later on in the week we resumed our drive back home to Florida, stopping near Savannah, GA for a break Wednesday night, and arrived home on Thursday. After driving to Brant Beach, NJ last summer and Kemah, TX the summer before that (both for Laser North Americans) this drive didn't seem too bad!
The second day of racing has come to an end and we've landed ourselves in a happy 5th place overall so far. The day began with a lighter breeze around 5-10 knots which built up in today's last few races. The choppy waves really messed with our crew-work and boat handling throughout the day but made for a fun time downwind surfing over waves. The first two races today went well with a 2nd and a 3rd, even though we had poor starts both races and made a large comeback the second one. The third race didn't go so well for us but we quickly moved on and got a 3rd, 6th, and 3rd in the next three races. Even though we have good boatspeed, our starts are still our greatest weakness. During the beginning of the day we kept fighting with other boats for the boat end of the line with no success so we abandoned that plan and got better starts further down the line. We were able to get clear air and pull away from some of the other boats faster than before with this strategy. We're working hard to achieve our goal of better starts and hopefully will come off the line in good lanes tomorrow!