today was the last cal cup of 2007...honest...we tried having it sat but the wind was not there so decided to have it on a sunday (for the first time of the season). location = emeryville.
sailed my 12.5 the whole regatta. only 4 races (and the first one, at over two hours in length, was a doozy).
the course was set on the cal cup boat (with emmett driving) in a building breeze and percey said he was thinking of going out with a 9. when he came back to change into his wetsuit, the wind died. it's been a rainy weekend and the breeze was off the pace. i decided to get wet and go out and slog on my 12.5 (which jim mcgrath thought i might have a few loose screws to be sailing on). i figured if i planed around for the other racers to see, maybe i'd inspire them to come out. i slogged to the pier and then got powered up. i was aiming for the darkest cloud i could see hoping for pressure from it (this is the hot tip for east coast sailing...aim for the darkest cloud during a storm for the best puffs and most pressure) and it paid off. can't get much angle out of the 12.5 upwind so i was hitting the pier hard, tacking, dipping south, tacking and then hitting the pier hard again.
percey was the next out. boy, he had some great angle on his 11. others followed. sylvester was on an 11 too (big sail for steve-o). pretty much the whole fleet was out on 11's except me on a 12.5, soheil on a 10 (he loves is 10) and ben on something big (maybe an 11.8?).
first race i lined up near the committee end. plan was to be powered by the start and plane through. got in a hole at 20 seconds and ate up some precious angle digging out of it. hit the pin hard...literally hit it...fin got wrapped around the anchor line...even with a 12.5 and 70cm fin, pretty hard to plane while dragging an anchor (call me a whimp...i know micah would have simply pumped around the course as if nothing was there...but i aint micah). the guys who made the start clean (s3 = steve sylvester, percey) where gone. the rest of the fleet was in slog or partial planing mode (including me). eric, soheil and i got planing again towards the port layline. eric was ahead and tacked. we all fell into holes and watched percey and s3 sail away while they had pressure and we did not (this is an example of where the grass is definitely greener on the other side :-). i finally started to plane near the pier (and ben was above me stuck without breeze). i was pointing so low that ben in slog mode was almost beating me up wind. i finally got planing on starboard. i followed eric to the port layline. i tacked when he tacked and got stuck in another hole. still below layline and took many double tacks to finally get around the top mark.
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