Slog 03/2013

Mark Mayer/Opening Day race. Amazing 80 degrees, but I still wore long underwear because you never know. CP and BS on GJ.

Start in SSW wind at 6. Port start put us way out front. Protected the middle and had a 100 boat length lead and was sailing up through the next class. Gonna win overall!
Then the wind stopped 500′ from (south) windward mark. Drove from leeward side on layline which was mistake #1. Buoy set in 200′ feet of water and there were hundreds of powerboats on the lake with their wakes and as we tried to clear the mark it was swinging 50′ (which is more than 2 of our boat-lengths and we had a boat to windward asking for course!). According to my very amused competition, the buoy hit us 15 times (not the other way around) so it was suggested that we needed to re-round the buoy 15 times to exonerate ourselves. I did not remember the rules so I figured a 720 would do like in Americas Cup. Passed by my competition!

Set the spinnaker in no wind but then figured out the air was from the NW now. Down with the spin and then wind(?) went ENE at 1-3. Dove below rhumbline and hit a wind slot, re-passed the competition and had a 50 boat length lead again. Yay!

Then the wind stopped again – convergence zone. We could see 10mph wind from the NNW on the lake above us. Boats up there were overpowered yet so close to us yet we were sitting in no wind, 80 degrees and I still had my long underwear on. Talk about hot and frustrated. All of the competition were ghosting on the the powerboat waves trying to be the first to get the NW fill. We were the last one to do it. Suddenly it was 15 mph and cold (did I tell you I was wearing my long underwear?). We made a charge at the end but ended up last in class. We did do our 720 right before the finish line.

Afterwards we sailed up and set the spin in 18mph. Good crew.

Bummed about my performance but the results are such that we finished very high overall and were a couple of small decisions from winning outright. But we did participate outright!