What a good experienced crew can do

SYSCO RACE Summer Twilight Series, 2016 I am in awe of my crew. They are the difference between finishing fourth and second. I did have experienced crew last week, but he was by himself and did not have assistance of our other experienced crew. When the two get together, they combine to form a team that just makes Aventura go.

The race course was new to us. The RC chose windward leeward course V, S-1-4-1-3-F. It was just right for the conditions. The wind at the start was 12 knots. The start was near B mark and toward the channel more than the last races. We ran a timing start early and determined that we could start at the barge on the north shore at 2:40 from the start. We were right there when we started. We ended up starting before most of the boats but behind River Weasel (RV). She was right on time and stayed in front the whole race. We however fought for second place.

At the windward mark we were fourth around it. We set the whisker pole to port. We determined that we would round the finish line to the Oregon side before the race. We observed white caps along the Oregon shore earlier this evening. We ended up rounding the first leeward mark behind La Dolce Vita (LDV), RV, and Blew Streak (BS). But we pick up a place when BS did not perform their pole dropping smoothly. We went to port tack and stayed on the tack long enough to make the starting line. Other boats, RW and LDV did not and had to tack to port tack to avoid the finish line. We stayed on starboard tack as long as we could. We finally tacked to port only to discover that BS was coming down on us. We had to duck. This ducking was the closest we did without colliding with the boat as I have come. We must have missed her by only a foot or a little more. It turned out to be advantageous for us. We tacked to starboard to make the mark and only had RW and LDV ahead of us.

We again set the pole to port, but this time I headed straight down to the mark passing close to the committee boat and over the starting line. We managed to stay abeam of BS and pass LDV, but RW was too far ahead to do anything about. When we rounded the second leeward mark we managed to do it smoothly to port tack while BS had trouble. We passed them and maintained port tack until we were able to make the finish line. We were second to finish.

I really like have my experienced crew with me do the races.

Congratulations are really due to William Street and Bill Ormond. They are the best.