Day 5

We were in boat preservation mode today and got a fourth. The wind was 25-30 knots from 080 max; gust 32 knots.. Quite a bit windier than any other day so far. Mains sails ragging upwind and mast snapping downwind.

We rounded the first mark first show with good speed upwind. On the run we kept our mast back and stayed away from danger in terms of not sailing too deep. This is safe but a bit slower. We lost four boats there and rounded the leeward gate. We caught up a bit upwind and rounded the top mark 4th and again were conservative downwind.

Howie Schiebler/Will Stout did a death roll just in front of us and dropped their rig about a quarter of the way down the last run. John Dane snapped his rigged behind us. It was hard to take to consciously go slow but we got around the track with no damage and another top 5 finish.

George Szabo/Mark Stube won the race and they won it downwind. One each run they sailed straight at the leeward mark, never gybed in the entire race. This is a great technique but one that I haven