Race Day 1

Today were are back at it in Miami after a week in Key West Sailing the Farr 40. Phil could not make it today as he was attending his wife Chrissy’s induction into the Hall of Fame at her University. So I had to bring one of my long time friends, Rod Davis, out of retirement. He had not crewed in a Star since 1977 but he did a great job. Rod has a Gold and Silver medal so I am hoping some of his skill rubbed off on me.

The day did not start our easily. First of all I got up at 0500 in Key West and drove to Miami with my wife Icka. We had a nice breakfast and got down to the club by 0930. Everything was good up to that point. Then on the way out to the starting line I realized that one of my mainsheet cleats was broken. So we had to borrow a tool from Eric Doyle and rob a spring from another cleat on the boat and put it all back together while en-route to the starting line. No real drama though as we had left the dock with plenty of time to spare. Just a little training of repairs at sea. That sparked a whole discussion on the Whitbread (“What is the worst repair you have to make at sea in the Whitbread?”) for the next 40 minutes, between Rod and I.

The race was started at 12:00 in a dying northerly wind. We wanted to go left before the start and left we went. The left paid big and we rounded the first mark 3rd behind George Szabo, (with his boat fixed1) and Nicholas Holm of Denmark. There were 71 boats out on the water today! The wind continued to die…at this point there was 5 knots of wind and patchy. We passed Holm on the run to round 2nd and Vince Brun got into third. At this point there was almost no wind. We coasted around the rest of the way and crossed the line 2nd to John MacCausland who had been about 7th at the previous mark.

I was very happy as this was the first race that I had actually finished this year and it was a damn good position. Rod was relieved when it was over because he spent most of the race in very uncomfortable positions on the leeward side of the boat.

When we got back to the dock, the race committee decided to abandon the race. That was a bit baffling. Their reasons were that too many boats finished at the same time in places 30-60, and they could not get the scores correct.

So we still haven’t finished a race yet this year. Tomorrow 2 races are scheduled