Grosse Pointe Sail Club Regatta

This was a series of 2 windward/leeward races. The first race was started with the wind only blowing maybe 3.5 to 4 knots. It was apparent that the committee boat side was heavily favored. On top of that the top pin placement boat said on the the radio that the wind was already at 90 degrees even though the course had been setup at 70 degrees. It was real important that we get on the committee boat (right) side of the course. There was a large opening on the committee boat side of the course but Night Moves also saw it and turned on our leeward side and filled the hole. I immediately put our boat to windward to slow us down so I would not be caught barging. This was enough for NM to get a boat length ahead of us on boat lane below us. Fortunately most of fleet was spread out on the line so they were already behind at the start. NM was eventually able to drive up into our lane so we had to tack. From this point on they covered us the rest of the race to win and we took second by 44 seconds.

The second race the committee boat was still favored in 6 knots of air and the rest of the fleet grasped this by coming in from the committee boat side. I decided early to stay more on the pin side on port and tacked to starboard when the first starboard tack boat reached us. This worked really well. We were on the line at the gun the left of all the boats. By doing this it also bottled up some of the boats that were coming in from the right. Starboard tack was favored by a little bit but the largest problem we had was Hot Ticket was to our right on the same step of the windward ladder. We came up to their line by alternately going a little low and fast and then punching up to get up a lane at a time. I was very concerned if they stayed there they would take us out past the layline and would make us follow them in to the windward pin. We managed enough to start back winding their sails and they were forced to tack early. They went through to leeeward of the the other 3 boat fleets so when we crossed again we were able to round ahead of them. The next downward leg we had all 4 J120's on our wind so I decided to jibe to get clear air. We were able to come in hot at the leeward pin and do a Mexican takedown. At this point coming out on port we had a NA40 Montombi ahead of us slowing our acceleration. We tacked and we just started covering Night Moves who we felt was our closest competition. We were able to hold him off the rest of the race and finish 40 seconds ahead of them in 1st. I think between strategy and crew work it was nearly a perfect race. If you take our total time for both race NM beat us by 4 seconds but the rules read if you are tied in points the last race takes precedence. Next race....Mackinaw!

Result: 1st out of 5 J120's for the series
Link: http://www.drya.org/race2005/Results/gpsc.htm