J-22 North Americans---Day Two

Well, today gave us a bit of everything. The first race of the day started in solid breeze with cloudy skies. We had a decent start but still were barely in the top 10 as we approached the first windward mark. We just hung tough throughout the race and picked up a few boats on every leg and narrowly missed finishing second to end up 3rd. Kelson Elam sailed a great race to take home the win.

The regatta leaders, Wehrheim-Skelly-Koski finished 8th so we were suddenly starting to feel like we might be in the mix.

The 2nd race was started in pretty solid breeze but started gradually dying on the first beat as rain started to move through. Wehrheim got out to an early lead and held on around the race course in some very trying conditions. We probably sailed our best race of series as we were able to get back from 10th at the first windward mark and clawed our way all the way back to 2nd, narrowly beating Terry Flynn who we were now very close to in the overall standings.

After the race, we backed way off of the rig tension in anticipation of lighter wind. Eventually, the skies began to clear and the wind was beginning to fill in again. We got another AVERAGE start but did find a good place to tack and clear out on to port tack and we decided to work the right side of the beat. With the rapidly approaching front, we felt like that the wind was going to try and clock a bit to the right, especially if it started to blow again.

This strategy worked pretty well and we rounded the weather mark around 4th. We decided we wanted the right again for the next beat so we stayed low on the run and defended the left side of the run so we could try and round the port gate. We managed to get to the gate in about 3rd and went to the right side of the beat. Sure enough, we were right (my tactician John Morran is amazing!!) and we rounded the next weather mark narrowly in first ahead of Chris Doyle with a pretty good lead on the rest of the pack.

We chose the same plan for the run and rounded the last leeward mark just ahead of Doyle. He tacked off and went left not long after the leeward mark rounding. We elected not to cover him and protect the right to ensure that we stayed ahead of Terry Flynn who was going right.

We eventually got headed and tacked back and found ourselves neck and neck with Doyle. He tacked underneath us on starboard and we sailed our butts off to stay on top of him all the while sailing into a gradual header.

He got very close but we were able to hold him off to the lay line and were able to win the race. The regatta leaders (Wehrheim) finished 6th in the race so things are starting to get interesting with 2 races to go. Here are the standings of the top 7:

Wehrheim--1-1-5-1-(8)-1-6-----15 pts
Young------5-(8)-1-4-3-2-1-----16 pts
Flynn-------2-5-3-3-(6)-5-3-----21 pts
Elam-------9-3-2-(9)-1-6-4------25 pts
Doyle------3-2-(13)-7-11-8-2---33 pts
Faust------4-4-7-5-4-10-(11)---37 pts
Johnston--6-11-4-2-(16)-4-8---35 pts

Overall, a great day of sailing! It looks like a cold front will come through tonight and we should have medium to brisk north winds tomorrow for the last two races. Couldn't ask for a better day of racing today and we feel very fortunate to be in the hunt for tomorrow.