Windsor Wednesday Race

This was a port favored tack to windward start with the committee boat at the left side of the line slightly favored. Wind was 10-12 knots out of the NW sunny conditions, course B. We worked our way up the line on starboard doing a couple of stop and goes. At the starting gun I had to punch up a little to clear the committee boat anchor line with Flyin Irish and Night Moves passing behind us at full speed on port. We continued for about 1500 yards and tacked to starboard. I saw a little more pressure on the left side of the course and I wanted to be left of the other J120's. Because Rod was constantly adjusting the main in puffs and lulls, we were able to tack before the top mark in front of FI and NM. We put up the .6 spinnaker nearly flawlessly. The next mark we needed to just turn down as we got lifted farther down the course. At the turn we did get stuck in some traffic and in particularly a green C&C35. Merlin had snuck in ahead and then he decided instead of coming up to get out of our way (we were leeward boat) he decided to come down to us. 40 boat lengths out he then started to scream at me about giving him room at the mark. I did reply that was not necessary until the 2 boat circle. I was tempted to have a crewman get the rule book and throw it to him because he just could not understand the concept. In any case Merlin managed to stay ahead of us at the next mark. It was a near fetch and we managed to stay a couple of lanes ahead of him. We almost managed to pass him but in the last quarter of the leg he came up and then dipped so we could not get an overlap with him. On the next leg Flyin Irish did manage to pass us to port and NM came screaming in from behind on our port. Past DP5 we got headed and we took our spinnaker down a little earlier than the other boats. We managed to nudge out NM and then nudged out Flyin Irish. The wind as usual was fluky and Mike and Colleen did a great job of keeping it trimmed by adjusting the headsail and lead to make our boat speed faster than NM and FI. With this 2nd and Jayhawker's 6th we are solidly in 1st place for the season.

Result: 2nd out of 6 J/120s
Link: http://www.windsoryachtclub.com/regatta2005/WYC%202005%20Spring%20Race%206.pdf