Weds. Night Series 2 Race 2

It's fourth of July and we're short-handed. Craig bailed out at the last minute.

The breeze is almost due South, with big swings in direction, and a few nice puffs coming in from both sides.

We aim for a committee-boat start. As we approach the line Jim and Steve are luffing at the boat. At 20 seconds to go, we dip below them, and make our approach. At the gun For Sail and Blue Meanie are over by half a boat and I think we've nailed it. Wrong. The RC calls us over too. That sometimes happens when you shoot out from behind a stalled pack. We jibe back to the line and just pinch over the anchor line.

We carry port tack in search of the right corner. Tack into pressure and a righty, things are looking good. Unfortunately at the top of the leg, the stbd tack lift fades and all the boats to our left except Blue Meanie cross us.

We sail to the port tack layline and wiggle around the first two boats to round. We're almost DFL, but close enough to get back in it.

We jibed soon after the mark. About a third of the way down the leg, I felt lifted on port, so we jibed on to stbd. That was a gainer. We round the leeward mark just behind Magic. They are stopped and pinching. We pinch up as high as we can and end up tacking. As we approach the port layline we're in a big lift. We hold on right to the layline and manage to round ahead of Meanie and Magic. The Olson and For Sail are not that far ahead.

Magic manages to keep inside an overlap, but we take advantage of their bad douse and squeak inside them. Meanie holds the chute on the reach leg as do most of the fleet ahead of us.

We decide to stay with the jib. It wasn't as windy as I thought and we probably could have held the chute, but being short handed, and having Aaron's kids with us, I chose to play it safe. It wouldn't have made much more than a one place difference.

We set about halfway down the leg. Manged to jibe inside Poppy at Z. Too little too late.

Crew:

Aaron
Donna
Harper
Sparky
Vic
Laura
Big E
me

We're not sailing Red Grant. I ordered a replacement winch from Steve. I hope it's here before next Weds.


Redemption

It was picked up by one of the racers that the course as shown for the A-1 & A-2 was incorrect.  It was shown and figured at 5.21 miles with a course of T-M-T-A-Z-RYC.  It should have been T-M-T-M-T-Z-RYC at 5.51 miles.  The only change it makes in places is that it takes Slice from 6th to 7th and Anemone from 7th to 6th in the A-2.

At least we've moved out of DFL.

Thanks to Carl Bloksberg for the attention to detail.