Sunfish Team Racing
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010well the weather all over the island was cruddy yesterday… there were patches of down pouring rain, and the winds looked to be 15-20 .. BUT you never know when you get to WP… I was there about 4:30pm with Felicity and it was pretty nasty, but as the minutes wore on the wind wasn’t that bad, and the rain had stopped… Ryan showed at about 5pm… then Chris Harris showed for RC… Joey huberman, tom Davison and Conrad Volle Showed… uhhh we got our selves a fleet… I decided to hold team racing instead of 7 person fleet racing (Brendan and Frank showed up last)… The winds proved to not be bad… I would estimate 12-14mph south to SW, and cloudy…. everyone was in control and tom said he couldn’t even fully hike out sometimes…
I had chris set up a modified “digital N” course… this is what they use for team racing in many parts… modified means the start finish line is in the middle of the course… the way it works is that there is TWO marks to windward which are rounded to STARBOARD (the right one is like an offset mark… then we had a downwind leg with two LEEWARD marks, rounded to PORT… the finish upwind… this worked out very well as the off set marks and small race course and SHORT starting line made boat on boat racing very close… we had 3 vs. 3 and the racing was very close… the way team racing scores is that the total scores of your team is added up and if it is less than the other than team, then you win… so if team A gets a 1st, 3rd and last (6) that’s 10 points. TEAM B will then get 2nd, 4th and 5th. that’s 11 points and team A wins…
On land we made up teams to try to get them even as possible,… they were tom davison, conrad volle and myself (lee montes) vs. Ryan Messina, Joey Huberman and Brendan Horn… Frank Minnisale was a little late and joined us after the first race… We won the first race… i think a few of us had to figure that this was not a typical fleet race… we discussed some tactics and winning combinations… and off to the second race which Ryan’s team won… Joey showed he understood some ‘moves’ and helped his team win the next two … i think;) the next race we had Ryan pinned at the start, but Tom Broke his mast and had to retire…. we then took on Frank to get back to 3 v. 3 and sailed the rest of the night… i believe we lost the series 2-3, but it was a tremendous lot of fun and good learning for everyone… we will have another day of team racing in august…. or if the weather is a bit scary and a small amount of sailors go out to sail!