This regatta was a dented trapezoid course with the first leg starting at 67 degrees on a starboard reach. The right pin mark was extremely favored. I chose to come in on port and tack inside Night Moves and Jayhawker to windward. After the gun went off although we were within 2 boat lengths of the right pin Jayhawker started yelling at NM to move to windward. He kept yapping about he must have room to go up but did not seem to understand he had give to both of us room within two boat lengths of the mark since we had an overlap. NM put up their code 0 first since he was getting gassed and had room below to put it up. Since JH to leeward took their time putting theirs up we had to wait for them to slide behind us to put ours up. At the next mark NM got there before us and dropped the code 0 and went back to a headsail. We got up there and for some reason the furling line came up in a knot. The only thing I could do was point the boat up, go slow and make the boats behind us go below us. Fortunately we were able to hold onto second by doing our go fast act. We got lifted to the next mark but unfortunately we did have to take a short hitch at the end because of boats rounding ahead of us. Here we tried to tack but for some reason the spinnaker was tangled up in it and it was another disaster. Because we were so slow we had to tack behind Merlin and then round mark B for a downwind leg with the .6 oz. Creative, a J105 was doing some shrimping with his spinnaker so we had to take him on the right and do a set. Merlin did a jibe set and was on the other board ahead
of us. This is where it got interesting. We had caught up to Merlin and only was maybe a boat length behind on the same board. Since we had trouble rolling them I had us do a quick starboard jibe and hope for better wind. When we crossed again we were ahead by about 2 boat lengths. I had intended to do a mexican takedown at the next mark but because I lost sight of the mark I jibe too soon. Because of this we had to jibe in front of Merlin and they rolled us before we got to mark C. The next leg was another reach and rounding it I managed to get inside of Merlin. We got our small spinnakers up and we did roll Merlin again. At this point I saw some bad weather and a header so I dropped out spinnaker first. Merlin dropped his right after but not before they rolled us again. When we hit mark we tacked to starboard right away and to get out from under them. This when the one inch of rain hit. What I did not realize was all the other boats stayed on port and then tacked when the win shifted 30 degrees in their favor. It was at this point we lost the race. The major mistakes I felt I made in this regatta was not preparing the crew enough for certain moves. I usually make it a point to be redundant about preparing for any moves and maybe these mistake would not have been made. Because our crew work this year has been much better than average I think sometimes I get complacent. When things did go wrong it did set us back. I also made a major mistake of not getting somebody in the crew to spot the mark I wanted to do a mexican takedown at. We would of crossed in front of Merlin. The worst mistake I made was not being aware of the changes in wind direction when the thunderstorm hit. I should of not got distracted by the conditions.
Result: 5 out of 5 J120's
Link:
http://www.drya.org/race2005/Results/csyc.htm
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