This race started to weather coming out of the Northeast at about 8 knots after a 40 minute delay. At the beginning we got a reasonable start. I went in on port at about 4 minute before the start and turned to starboard when the boats turned to starboard. I managed to get the favored right side of the line and was about 10 boat lengths at the gun half a boat length behind it. This allowed Flyin Irish and some other J120s to go to weather of us. This allowed Capers to get up to our windward side. We stayed a little to left of rhumb to stay away from the Canadian shore a little later on. Unfortunately some in our class stayed a little to left of us before Southhampton and we rounded in 5th with Hot Ticket 15 minutes ahead. After we rounded we went to .75 oz and code 0. We were averaging 11 knots when the wind picked up. About 25 miles out from Spectacle Reef we got gusts up to 26 knots. I was down sleeping when I heard a bang that did not sound good. Our 3/4 oz. chute blew and the crew was beginning to gather it up. Once cleaned up we went to our code 0 again. The wind picked up even more. 
When I was driving we got Carinthia up to 18 knots and I was estatic. Mike took over and we then did 21.6 for at least for a minute and a half. Previous to this the fastest I ever had the boat was 16! I guess after 21.6 that just does not seem as fast. 15 minutes later our halyard blew so I dialed the boat down to a headsail. When the wind slowed down a bit we went back to the code 0 where at this point we could see Hot Ticket to leeward. This reinvigorated us to really work on boat speed. We stayed even with Ticket for a time but the loss of our 3/4 hurt us and they pulled slowly ahead. At that point the wind came out of 260 degrees and we were tacking with for miles and miles. Finally about 8 miles out we tacked towards Canada and Ticket did not cover. I knew that the wind coming our of the west the best place to approach the island would be from the north. Ticket chose to tack along Boblo. We kept waiting for HT to announce their finish but it did not happen right to our finish. Some one looked behind and saw Merlin finishing just ahead of Ticket. Apparently Ticket thought Merlin was Carinthia. This lucky break allowed us to sneak in.
One thing of note. The entire crew stayed up the last fifteen hours and did all that was neccessary to keep the boat moving including huddling on the windward rear quarter to keep the boat upright. Great job guys!
Crew: Rod Weston, Colleen Scoville, Lynn Kotwicki, Baker Keeler, John Harvey, Mike Badendiek, Nancy Caldwell, Ben Thorsen, Nathan Caspers
Result: 2nd out of 9 boats
Link:
http://www.byc.com/mack05/results-s
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