New York Yacht Club Annual Regatta Wrap-Up

Team Hoss prevailed in the Swan 42 class at the 155th New York Yacht Club Annual Regatta!

We had a 6 point lead going into Sunday's races. The morning started off cool, rainy and the forecast for wind did not look promising. Once we arrived at the racing area after about an hour motor out, the rain stopped, the skies cleared and a 11-16 knot Northeasterly breeze settled in.

In the first race, we got hung up with a boat on the starting line that was making radical turns to keep us from going above him and then below him. When it was all said and done, we ended up with a pretty dismal start near the weather end. We had to take a clearing tack to the right and hope that the breeze shifted right.

About half way up the beat, it was pretty clear that the left was winning the beat and we rounded about 10th or so. We sailed the rest of the race in pretty good form and worked our way back to a 6th. We managed to beat our nearest competitor in the series but the 3rd place overall boat managed a 3rd in the race and closed to within 4 points of our lead.

In the second race of the day, we had an okay start but I think we ended up on the right side of the course as we were trying to stay in touch with the our nearest competitor. I believe the left side came in and we were pretty deep at the weather mark. On the run, we got ping ponged from side to side and ended up kind of stuck in the middle and ended up having to round the port gate outside a boat that was making a very slow rounding. Suddenly, we were last or very close to it.

We decided to go right and got out on the edge and made up a lot of ground to round the next windward mark about 10th. Since we had gained on the right on the beat, we decided to do a jibe set at the weather mark and we managed to roll another 3 or 4 boats. At the finish, we were on the verge of picking up two more boats at the finish but they didn't allow us proper room to finish. We managed to get across the finish line in 6th and we would have had a very good case to throw out one or both boats but we elected to try and stay out of the room.

Through it all, we actually gained on our closes competitors again! Going into the last race, we had about a 7 point lead.

Glenn got us a beautiful start in the last race, one boat up from the pin. The breeze seemed fresher on the left but we elected to be conservative and tack back across to the right to consolidate our position with the fleet. A few boats went left of us and managed to round the windward mark ahead of us. We gained on the 2nd and 3rd place boats on the run and had a really good leeward mark rounding that eventually propelled us into 2nd at the next windward mark and we held that spot to the finish.

In a regatta where it was very difficult to be consistent, we managed a 1-3-4-6-6-2 to win the regatta by 9 points. It was a very satisfying victory and our team did a really great job in tough conditions.

The New York (Swan) 42 Nationals will be held in Newport in mid-July and we are going to reassemble the same team and make a run at that one. I know I learned a lot at this regatta and look forward to seeing if we can improve our performance.