A Love 4 Sailing

Day 7 - Brought temperatures near 60 with 10 - 20 knot southwesterly winds.

Race 11 we started in the middle of the line and headed left.  Tacked and ducked the 2 boats on our upper hip.  Waited for the wind to go back to the right and tacked back to join the fleet.  Crossed all but one boat and chose to play up the left side.  With a nice left hand shift we vaulted into the lead.  Unfortunately this cost us to slightly overstand the weather mark.  We still rounded first but with just a 3 boat length lead.  Sailed well down wind to round the leeward gate with a 10 boatlength lead.  We stretched our lead throughout the race and won by nearly 2 minutes. 

Race 12 - We started one boat up from the leeward end.  Due to a large left hand windshift, we failed to make the pin and ended up tacking and ducking 2 boats.  The winds increased to nearly 20 knots as we tacked back to the left to protect that side.  The wind shifted huge to the right as we struggled to sail up wind in the heavy breeze.  At the weather mark we could not make our starboard lay-line and had to tack and duck a couple boats.  Unfortunately, we failed to complete the duck and “love-tapped” one of our competitors.  This forced us to complete a penalty turn as the other boats rounded and set.  We jibed after our rounding as the fleet sailed off on starboard.  They were sailing on a lift which we capitalized on by jibing.  This put us immediately back into 2nd place near the leeward mark.  The RC made a course change top the right as we rounded the right-hand gate.  The wind went back to the left and we tacked.  This put us in the lead temporarily as the lefty faded-out and shifted back to the right.  We crossed our competitors and stayed right but another left-hand shift came in which allowed them to close the gap.  We rounded 2nd at the weather mark and headed downwind.  At this point there were gusts of 25 knots as we planed towards the leeward gate.  We rounded the left gate this time and made huge gains on the right as we tacked and crossed our competitors.  We covered them the rest of the beat to finish 1st.  It made for quite an exciting race.  We now have a 13 point lead with four races to go.  Thanks to Mary Kate’s brothers and sister as well as Amy Simmons for showing-up in support. 

Two more races scheduled for tomorrow.  With a couple of good finishes we will be able to say we are going to China for the Games.  Thanks to all my supporters and click here for the results.    http://208.106.141.167/npt/c/cnt/down/07PTResultsFri.pdfÂ