Grosse Pointe Yacht Club Bluenose - How Carinthia Got Her Groove Back

This was a triangle race running around the triangle clockwise. The wind was varying between 335 and 348 degrees with wind speeds around 12 knots. Because the first leg was going to be a close reach I felt it was important to start at the left pin upwind from all the other 4 J120s. At 1.5 minutes before the gun I ran up toward the pin on starboard and when I felt there was enough room to tack on port. We managed to be near full speed at the gun where the leeward boats were going a little slow because of maneuvering. Merlin was the next boat down and they could not get up us before the start because the where too far down the line(thanks Doug). With a clean start I could sense the others were drifting south of the rhumb line we went down with them in the puffs to give cover. Every time the wind went left we gave them some gas. Hot Ticket got caught in the group and got squirted out the back. They then went to the north of us but I was not concerned because there were other slower boats up there to block there air. Merlin went way low on the course but I felt it would only be extra distance and when she came up to our line at the mark we would still gas them. With Jayhawker on our line behind us we would go up to their lane the wind backed and still get faster down the leg by doing so. We got the first mark in first place. After gybing we put up the .6 oz spinnaker. We were going slow at first so I saw an open spot above us and got

the boat moving again. At the end of the leg we needed to gybe before reaching mark W. We had it catch on the spreader so it was necessary to go behind the C&C35 to our left since we were on port. We did a Mexican takedown so we managed to accelerate and get above most of the boats ahead of us on another close reach. The last 2 miles of the leg the wind went to 50 degrees apparent so we put up the code 0. We used it around the last mark and the short dogleg in first. This race was determined at the start and if executed well there would be no pasing lanes for the boats behind us. It feels good now that Carinthia has her groove back.

Result: 1 out of 5 J120s
Link: http://drya.org/race2007/Results/gpycBN.htm