Detroit Yacht Club Sweepstakes Regatta - Redemption!

This was a series of 2 W/L races. Conditions started light and variable with 2 start delays. Although the start was set up for 60 degrees about 6 knots wind, the pin side was extremely favored. I noticed that that in the J105 start that Creative managed to port start ahead of everyone at the pin. In the NA40 start the pin side was also favored. I tried to start on port but let Ihnsanity get underneath me. This was a near disaster as he started to force me up and I had to jam the boat up and then just missed the pin on the port side of the boat. Because of slowing down we crossed behind Night Moves on starboard. We sailed to weather well as we were able to sail a little above and caught up a little to Ihnsanity. I believe this was because we had tuned the mast to fall off at the top to leeward a little to get us a little speed advantage. In any case we managed to get to the top mark in 2nd just behind NM. We got our spinnaker up pretty fast and blanketed NM downwind. I decided I wanted to jibe to the left of NM so that when we came across on starboard so we could cross ahead. Later in the downwind leg I felt that the wind was a little stronger on the left so we came in on the layline and then did a mexican take down ahead of NM. This put us in 1st place. At this point it was a loose cover staying on the Canadian side of the course and winning the race.

Race 2 was with the wind at about 8.5 knots with the line fairly square. We started biased towards the pin side with

Ihnsanity in the middle and NM on the right side. We managed to work up on Ihnsanity and forced her away and then tacked underneath NM. When we tacked back on port Ihnsanity tacked right in front of us in our lane. Because NM was a couple lanes up we tacked out to get a clear lane and almost up to the left layline. Although we would not able to gain we could get clearer air and reduce the damage. After rounding the windward mark in 3rd we jibed right away to get on the left side of the course. We managed to catch up to a point where Ihnsanity rounded the leeward mark ahead of us but because we came in and did another mexican take down we were able to round on the inside of NM and climb up to 2nd. On this windward leg Ihnsanity incredibly tacked away from our lane a little past the layline and rounded in first. We had the NA40 Montabi round just ahead of us and I snuck in between them and the mark. He started to come down a little and thanks to Nancy's quick thinking of gathering the spinnaker so we would not touch the mark. We then filled the spinnaker and jibed to port. Although in first I wanted to stay to the left of Ihnsanity where if we had to cross we could do it on starboard. Fortunately at the finish line we did cross in front of her and jibed back in front of her because the left side of the line was favored and finished 1st. Both Night Moves and Ihnsanity sailed very good races for the finishes were all less than 50 seconds apart. I felt we used a couple of good tricks and again had some great crew work. Rob Ramirez said he liked the mexican takedown so much he wanted to rename it the Puerto Rican takedown. In any case we had some mediocre starts and managed to climb back up...redemption. Maybe we can get another picture of the trophy again this year.

Result: 1 out of 3 J120s
Link: http://www.drya.org/race2005/Results/dycsweep.htm