Western Hemisphere Championship

Photo by Ken Batzer

Coconut Grove

The final series of the Star winter racing is happening on Biscayne Bay, today through Sunday.  Two races per day are scheduled to award the Spring Silver Star in the USA.  37 teams from 7 countries are competing.

With the sun shining, the water temperature at 78F, the wind from the east at 10-14 knots, the sailing conditions were excellent as usual on Biscayne Bay.  The Brazilian’s came out strong with Lars Grael and Jorge Zarif finishing in the top three in both races and taking a commanding lead in the series after day 1.  There were several individual recalls in both starts and the wind was shifty as it came over Key Biscayne.  So there was plenty of mixing.  If you got out of phase with the shifts you could lose a lot of distance in a hurry.

I am sailing this regatta with Arturo Lopez of Brasil.  This is our first time sailing together so we have some room to improve on our boat handling and communications.  We managed a 9, 3 and are in 4th place.  Many of the top teams had one good race and one in the teens.  It is a long series at 8 races and after 5 races, each team will discard their worst score.  The “discard” keeps the teams very close in score and usually means that the regatta will be won in the last race, which is good.

Friday’s forecast is for winds in the 10 knot range from east southeast.

Complete scores can be found at www.yachtscoring.com

Paul