Seven hours is a long time to spend on a Laser!
When we left the club at 11:40 it looked promising. A little breeze out of the SW which could turn into a real sea breeze. The cloud cover was not encouraging. Turns out the cloud cover hung around until mid-afternoon and the breeze wouldn't settle down long enough to get the racing going. When the clouds went away and the sea finally settled in, it was about 3:30.
The frustrated RC got the AM, M, and GM fleets off with only one general recall. We had to suffer through 2 general recalls and a postponement for a 20 degree lefty. We finally got a start off. I had a clean start on boat late at the boat end in 12-15knots. To my amazement, I was sailing high and fast and blew by the 2 boats immediately ahead. When Peter Seidenberg just barely crossed me by inches halfway up the beat, I was pumped!
It all went down hill after that. I dropped half the fleet on the upper part of the long beat, heald my own downwind, sailed OK on the second beat, made a couple of nice mark roundings, and sailed a good final beat to finish 22nd.
When I asked Peter if he was confident of his crossing, he said "I knew I could cross you". How did he know? I couldn't tell! He went on to win his third straight race. If you are looking at the results, he withdrew from the first race because he didn't honor the offet mark. What an amazing sailor!
Lessons learned-- check for weeds often, and work really hard, all the time.
1 comment:
Had to chuckle over this story. So many times I've been right with Peter halfway up the first beat.... and then half a mile behind him at the finish. He certainly is an amazing sailor. And I think he has been getting even faster as he gets older!
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