Team Seacats

Although the air temperature is on a steady decline, the racing action was great yesterday and promises to get even better today! We had a good day battling with the Nacra 20 fleet in what eventually became 18knot winds. The day started light and shifty and we split from the fleet to go left in the first race which put us a good bit behind Trey Brown (Team Velocity) but rounding A mark in second. We worked to stretch on the fleet a little and were trying everything to run down Trey and Alan. On the last downwind leg, we finally got hooked into a good line of breeze and closed up on Trey’s heels. They still held on to the lead for the finish in the first race.

The second race we again split from the fleet to go left. This time it paid off gangbusters and we were halfway back down to C by the time Trey and the rest of the fleet were rounding A mark. A big windline had come down the lake and we rode it catching the F18 fleet that started ten minutes before us and the C mark rounding was nuts. One boat was capsized just after the mark and as we’re getting setup to round, I see an F18 barreling on the edge of control coming in on starboard. Recognizing they were going to potentially be a hazard, Karl and I shot low to leave us an exit strategy. The F18 ended up capsizing on top of the mark and I watched as their mast swung down right at us but landed safely in the water one foot behind our rudders! On the next downwind leg, Trey managed to hook into a good gust and ate up our lead. With the F18 still tangled in the A mark and pulling it away, the race committee put a mark boat in place with a “mark missing” flag (which means you round that boat instead of the mark). We were lucky that Karl saw this and alerted me to it and we correctly rounded the boat. Trey wasn’t so lucky and didn’t realize what was going on until he was some distance away. We covered Trey and safely sailed to a 1st in that race.

The 3rd and final race for the day, the wind was ON. We nearly missed the start but got in line and underway in decent shape. It was to be a short Course 5 (one lap) and the Nacra 20 fleet was galloping and huffing in the 18knots of breeze. We slipped back in the back but tacked in a big shift that put us smack on the layline and left the rest of the fleet way overstood. We rounded A in 1st and started downwind while we could see a big fleet equalizing wind line coming down the lake. The rest of the fleet ran us down in that wind line and we started jockying for position to get inside as the fleet all reached C mark at about the same time. Trey had gone to the right side and caught an advantage getting to C first and us second. We spent the next upwind leg trying to find a leg up to climb over Trey but we weren’t able to and finished 2nd.

So right now, Velocity is in 1st with 4 points and we’re in second with 5. Wick Smith and his ‘grandson’ Wick are joining us today (Wick had school stuff yesterday) and they have a lot of talent – it will be an interesting day.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.