Laser and Etchells and Ultimate 20's Oh My!

Ok Ok I know it has been a while since I have updated the blog! Here is the quick and dirty version on what I have been up to!

Richmond Yacht Club Totally Dinghy September 25-26th!
A solid 22 boat Laser fleet, with shifty light to moderate wind. I was consistently in the top ten with a few top five finishes. I finished the regatta in 6th place.

Etchells Fleet Race October 2nd
My second time racing on Etchells and I loved it! The San Francisco bay fleet is not that big but the racing is very competitive. We had ten boats out on the line and those ten boats seemed to be with in a few boat lengths of each other all day long. This produced some hairy mark roundings and really good drag racing up wind. Our driver Wayne Clough did an excellent job of keeping the pointy end in the right direction, John did a great job of trimming the main and calling tactics. I got placed in my usual keel boat position, the guy on the pointy end! Something about having a low center of gravity and weighing less then any body else on the boat. Maybe one of these days I will sport a beer belly and find myself at the back of a boat. Just kidding! We finished out the day with a couple of thirds and a fourth.

Fall Dinghy at St. Francis Yacht Club October 23-24th
Another solid 22 boat Laser fleet, with very shifty gusty and wet wind! I had a great start in the first race, won the pin and led the fleet most of the way to the weather mark. The wind shifted drastically and the lead pack was becalmed and the back of the pack sailed by. This was how the rest of the day went, I had great starts and great speed and tactics only to succumb to the extreme wind shifts, which resulted in bad finishes. Oh yeah did I mention it was pouring! There was no racing on Sunday due to extreme weather, 40knot gusts with dumping rain. I finished out the weekend in 13th place. Arrrrrrg!

Richmond Yacht Clubs Great Pumpkin October 30-31st
Ultimate 20 sailing! Buoy racing on Saturday, pursuit race on Sunday. We had a great day of sailing on Sunday, wind rain and tons of close racing. Finished 3rd out of 11 and claimed some hardware!
The famous Great Pumpkin Pursuit race the involves sailing from Richmond then around Angle Island and back. You can go either direction, most of the fleet along with us went clockwise. The boat owner Tom Hughs was nice enough to let me drive for the day which was awesome! I worried him a little when wind died at the start and we drifted over the line early having to set the kite to get to the proper side and then started last in our group... Once I got the boat dialed in we spent the rest of the day picking off boats. Unfortunately the wind never came up so we could not correct out on time as planned. We ended up beating all of the rest of the U-20's and finished 54th place out of 176! It's all about next year!