Hello all,
I had quite an eventful weekend skippering the St. Francis team in Golden Gate Yacht Club's Inter-Yacht Club Challenge, a match race in 1D35s. I had never sailed on a 1D35 before our practice session on Thursday, but really enjoyed sailing the boats and think they're a great fit for match racing. We had four round robins on Saturday and Sunday, and it ended up being quite a good duel between us and the Golden Gate Yacht Club team, who had 4 members of the BMW Oracle Racing team on board. Twice we were winning the race and had drawn a foul in the prestart against them, and in both races they were able to catch up and draw the penalty back on us. The most crazy situation was at the finish line of our thrid race against them when we ended up being luffed into the RC boat in the flood tide and then rafting up on the GGYC boat in the process. We won the other two races against them, so actually ended up winning the tiebreaker and winning the round robins. We choose Berkeley to race in the semis, beat them, but then lost in the finals to GGYC on Sunday. I've written up a full race report on my website (getsailing.org) and have plenty of good pictures there of the carnage as well. Now I get one week at home gettig my life all sorted out after these last hectic weeks, before heading up to the new US Sailing Match Race Training Center in Sail Sheboygan next week for the Northern Lights Cup followed by a US Sailing Team Training session in the Eliot 6s.
Cheers,
Genny
