Shields Fleet 9

Notes

Started at the boat, cleared air to the right, and enjoyed a 10-degree righty back across the long starboard tack.  Around the first mark we held a little high to keep the air clear and tried to keep the air clear going down wind.  Surprisingly didn’t seem to be much of a tidal difference between the sides downwind, but a lot of confused chop made the velocity the most important find out there.  That leeward mark came up surprisingly quick with the full-moon rip.  The last beat proved more nerve-wracking than we hoped as we debated which corner to cover.  Thankfully a reasonably stable breeze allowed us to keep our nose out as we bounced between the left and right hand packs.  A 10 degree shift would have sent us plummeting down the ladder.  Thank god for that win because the youngest brother and his agenda caused us to be very late for the first start (anyone notice the spinnaker coming at them at the gun? We really hope not.) That could have caused a long swim for that sibling if there hadn’t been that opportunity for redemption.

John Edenbach, #36

Notes

Notes

Summer Series First Race Report from Raven (201)

We got a great start a little down from the boat and were able to tack to the right in the sea breeze pretty much when we wanted…into a 20-degree header and way less pressure. After a long while plodding across to the right, hoping for breeze and the header to affect the rest of the fleet on the left, we bailed and banged the left. Catholic sailing, Roy calls it; crossing the course. 26 transoms we saw. I find these boats look a lot better bow-on.

We rounded Can 13 deep, as you can imagine. Had an indifferent downwind leg to mark V as the left shift that made the right such a disaster made the run one-sided. Thank dog for a race committee headed by Robin Wallace! He set a new weather mark, and didn’t shorten there to put us out of our misery.

Having learnt our lesson on the first leg we short-tacked up the navy side of the course with Paul Sollitto (76) and Tom Hirsch (254)…as the breeze started easing back right. We managed to drop most of the boats  we’d passed downwind. We rounded deep…again. Going downwind we got a few boats and got
within striking distance of a few more as we hung left. We had a nice rounding in between Wendy Lotz on 138 and Bill Shore on 101 and managed to live on Richard Sugarman (21)s hip for a while out to the right again.

Way up ahead I saw Stubby (59) and Kim Roberts (143)–who¹d been leading a tight two-boat race with Stubby all night‹shoot the line. Stubby apparently got the gun by half a length. Nice horizon job on both crews’ part.

We managed to finally do something right and got back to a mid-fleet finish, which, given where we’d been, we were pretty pleased with. Especially given quality of the sailors on the other boats around us who obviously had as much trouble figuring out the breeze as we did.

The upside of our mediocre finish was that everyone aboard Raven was in tactical agreement throughout the race. It¹s nice to sail with a crew in total harmony. Even if we did all have our heads up our…

–Andy