The city front delivered a beautiful weekend of racing, albeit not what we always expect in terms of big wind. Conditions both days were #1 and #2 conditions generally. We had 4 races Sat. and 3 races Sun, with 9 boats racing. Courses varied between 35 and 50 minutes, all double W-L variety, so boathandling and mark roundings were a major key to success.
Saturday brought fairly typical city front conditions, lighter and trickier early on, and a bit more stable as the wind built up, though it didn't fill in more than 15 knots, more like 12 on average. We saw building flood throughout the day, but not crazy, drawing most of the fleet to the wall upwind. On Mooregasm, we focused on shifts and pressure that would enable us to work our way in the correct direction. On the boat, we talked a lot about how variable the puffs and shifts were going to be, acknowledging that things could change dramatically. This kept things calm and allowed us to string puffs together and focus on keeping the boat moving and executing consistently good boathandling.
After winning the first race, we continued conservative tactics which did enable 11, 104, 64, 89 and others to edge out on us at times, but we felt that as long as we could stay close, we would find solid results. After a rough first race, Firefly once again proved to be very fast and we battled aggressively with them in races 3-4, losing out both times. But consistency put us in the lead by a point going into Sunday knowing a drop race was assured.
Firefly came out swinging on Sunday morning, as expected, but the wind was flukey in race 5, surprisingly holding to the right of typical city front wind direction, especially in race 6-7. Late ebb offshore and some big swings in race 5 showed that 89 and 104 were the hot boats on the day. Watts and team battled with Schoen throughout the day with 104 taking bullets in the final 2 races. Watts was super fast with that #2 up. #11 Spaulding team also showed many moments of speed and tactics on the day.
Karl, Ali and Karen worked together extremely well on Mooregasm, nearly flawless boathandling. Great tacks really clawed us out of several tough situations and put us back into races we could have easily slid way back. We used our standard set-up on the rig - 600 & 400 on shrouds, 341 on rake, leads well inboard sheeting firm with progressively more headsail twist throughout the weekend, lots of trim adjustments when things got light to keep the boat moving.
St. Francis was awesome to us, as usual, with great food and drinks, but the RC was just fantastic. The starting lines we superbly well set, with the best starting boats at both ends making it to the wall at nearly the same time. This is the right way to manage current on the city front and very hard to do. We were very impressed. What a great 2 days of tight racing in awesome conditions. We would have loved to have been a little wetter, but all in all, a great time!
Welcome fleet week
Fire boat clearly here to celebrate the start of race 6