My roommate Steve Hunt has a couple of important tactical guidelines that he teaches his high school sailors. One of them is to stay on the lifted tack towards the mark. Today's racing conditions were challenging to say the least and his advice was spot on. The breeze was coming exactly offshore and this provided for some very shifty winds. We saw a 40 degree range in direction and velocity was between 8 and 20 knots. In our team huddle before the first race I told my team that we were aiming for three top 6 finishes and that we were going to achieve this by not getting caught out to one side of the race course in order to still be able to capitalize on all the shifts which became more and more random towards the shore line (the windward mark was 100 yards from the beach). The plan worked out and we rounded the first windward mark twice in 1st and once in 2nd!
With a 7th and two 2nds we won the day and finished 6th overall (on count back with Jeff Ecklund's Star).
Our team steadily improved over the last couple of days and it has been another interesting and rewarding learning experience for me. I would in particular like to thank our "Pit " Linda Lindquest-Bishop for some good advice in regards to our team communication and role distributions.
Obviously my thanks go out to all of our team members for having put a great effort into getting Delta its first really good result on the score board. Bob Hughes (our alternative driver for Saturday and Sunday) Morgan Reeser and Willem Vanwaay kept our boat fast and we all know that the best tactician is called "Boat Speed"!!!!
Last but not least I'd like to thank Doug and Dalton Devos and their awesome shore crew for enabling us to sail this great event.
For me its off to Miami tomorrow, getting ready for the first Melges 20 event of the winter. I'll once again be sailing with Michael Kiss on "Bacio". Can't wait to bomb around Biscayne Bay!
Chris out
Full results can be found here
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