Fall 7- We have a race and a winner!

It finally happened. After multiple cancellations and 2 months of waiting, we had the race that would decide the winner of the Fall Series. Unfortunately, one of the boats that was in the tie for first place had damaged their main the day prior and was not able to compete. The 4 boats that did come out were treated to a beautiful sunny day with shifty winds under 10 knots and what ended up being a challenging race. The course was set to start in the

southerly direction, head out to the virtual east mark for a starboard rounding, south to HI and finish at the start line in a northerly direction.

The wind was blowing from the NE, average of 10 knots.

The race started at 11:05 due to the need to get the race committee and boats organized. When the countdown hit 0, Contrails and Aireze

were over early. Beach Committee made the over early announcement. Contrails executed a textbook return to the start line maneuver and gave the

rest of the fleet a head start. The boats all took off in a general SE to S direction due to divers, wind and current to get to the virtual mark. The current was squirrely and the captains had to calculate this into their maneuvers. As Beach Committee watched from shore, we could see boats farther out being pushed north while boats closer in were being

pushed south. The wind was oscillating and putting the main and jib trimmers to work. Eximius took a more southerly angle, Second Mate a more E/SE angle and Contrails split the middle. The

weather was perfect for Contrails and they made up for their over early delay and rounded the virtual mark first, and maintained the lead for the remainder of the race. Aireze realized a bit late that they had gone over early and decided to run a practice sail which is a great way to spend a day on the course.

The race was a bit more challenging than normal with the boats and their crew getting a good workout getting plenty of tacks and jibes along with fine tuning of the sails.

Thank you to the crew of Contrails for start mark duty for the 2024 race season.

Congratulations to the crew of Contrails for taking First place for Fall 7 and for taking First  place overall in Fall Series.