Wednesday Night Racing Update
April 30, 2009
I’m not afraid to say it – it feels pretty darn good. Tonight Team Dakota Girl went out and won their class in the weekly Annapolis Yacht Club Wednesday Night Racing series. The win has put us in first place for at least the next week. This team earned it and they deserved it.
Tonight’s race was punctuated for me, by how important thinking ahead is for successful racing. The J35 class starts with the BIG boats (Farr 40’s, B44.7’s, Farr 395’s, etc.) and can really get punished coming off the starting line if they try and mix it up.
The wind direction made the pin end of the start line quite a bit favored, so it was clear with minutes to go that it would be crowded on that end of the line. With that in mind we opted to let the big boats have that end, look for clear air and a good lane in the middle of the line and escape to fight our fight on the course.
Additionally we identified that all the boats would flop to port tack shortly after the starting gun, and that shortly after that we’d be looking for a lane to come back on starboard (avoiding the Horn Point Shoal) tack and looking for clear air to get out to the rest of the course. So what sets this race apart from most others is that is EXACTLY what happened.
As expected the big boats fought hard for the pin end of the line, and fortunately so did most of our J35 competition. We escaped the starting line with great speed and good position as the majority of our fleet suffered in disturbed air and restricted maneuverability.
At that point we extended to the windward mark (Hackett’s Point) and set ourselves up to execute a jibe set. We pulled it of with aplomb and sped for home and our first Wednesday Night Racing win of the season.
That was fun.
I’d like to give special thanks to Grady Byus (pictured above) for sailing with us tonight. It is always a pleasure to sail with you my friend.
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