J-22 North American's----Day One

It would have been difficult to have ordered up a better day of sailboat racing today. Conditions were virtually perfect with the breeze ranging from probably 8 to 18 knots with plenty of shifts thrown in for good measure.

Flip Wehrheim from Rochester, NY dominated the day with excellent starts and great speed around the course.

We had a pretty good day and felt better as the day went on. My starts were mediocre and we had some pretty nice rallies to end up with a 5-8-1-4 putting us in third place behind Wehrheim and Terry Flynn in second. Finishing in the top 10 in this fleet is not easy!

They key to success today was having the ability to get on to port tack pretty quickly after the start and get up the lake. If you were pinned and unable to tack, you were forced to sail through a couple of shifts and relegated to being in the "pack". The race we won, we felt pretty strongly that the right side of the course had more pressure and decided not to fight it out at the pin end (it was favored) and started higher up the line with a strong emphasis on tacking to starboard immediately.

As we had hoped, the right did fill in stronger and we were able to round the weather mark narrowly in first and extend our lead from there.

It was also key to be able to "change gears" and to keep the boat moving through a variety of conditions. It was important to not have the rig too tight for the lulls yet still be able to de-power in the stronger puffs.

Tomorrow's forecast is for stronger breeze pumping in from the south in advance of a cold front that should come through tomorrow night. We have a lot of room to continue to improve and if I can do a better job of getting off the starting line, I am optimistic that we can potentially do a bit better tomorrow.

The J-22 class is awesome! Great competition and great sportsmanship on and off the water.