Elvstroem Zellerbach, 1st day of racing

JP and I are back together in the 29er, racing in the Elvstroem Zellerbach in San Francisco. The turn-out is a bit disappointing with only 10 boats on the starting line, but we do have some really good teams present.
We have Charlie McKee crewing for Kristen Lane from team Brickhouse (her 29er is called the "Brick Skiff"), Antoine Screve/ James Moody (the US team that will be representing at the ISAF junior worlds this year in Istanbul Turkey), Max Fraser/David (finished 5th at the worlds in the Bahamas) and few other talented juniors.
This is how it looked like this morning:

It was pretty low tide and we were going to race in the flood the whole day. Everyone who has sailed at St Francis Yacht Club knows that the current place a huge role. Especially in the lighter breeze. In a westerly breeze everybody heads immediately for the shore in order to get out of the adverse current. And that's what we did in the first race. We led for almost the whole first upwind, just to get caught by Max and David that kept working the shore even more than we did! Luckily we had pretty good downwind speed and were able to recapture the lead and win the first race.

Then finally the wind started to pick up a bit and continuously did so until the 4th and last race of the day when we started seeing some good puffs in the 18 knots range. But with the incoming tide it wasn't really a problem to handle it as the waves stayed fairly small.
Team Screve/Moody really lit it up with decent boat speed, but even better upwind tactics. Twice they pulled away from us by staying longer on the outside and picking a good right shift to come back to the shore. Well done boys! Our team did o.k. as well, ending the day on a 1st, two 2nds and a 3rd. Full Results can be found here.

And this is how it looked like when we came back in, just ridiculously amazing, isn't it?

JP and I are looking forward to a couple of more races tomorrow. Oh, and did I mention that JP pulled off four absolutely amazing starts? Wolf style baby....
For people who would like to watch the racing live you should try the St Francis Webcam that allows you to zoom in and turn the camera. Racing will start late because we have to wait for the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon to get under way.
The Triathletes swim from Alcatraz to Crissy Field (right next to St Francis Yacht Club) and then get on their bikes.
Chris out