Welcome back to everyone who made it out Sunday!  There was some mix up on who got 3rd place today so I have the writeup from 2nd place and Laura will owe me a writeup later!  We had a good turnout with 19 boats coming out and moderate breeze and temps around 60.  Thank you to Jacob and Tyler for doing RC and getting 5 races off despite a late start and wind shift!  Kudos to Brian for getting 3 bullets, who said he learned some things at the clinic 2 weeks ago!  Also congrats to Kaitlyn on getting a bullet in race #4.

I have not sailed since the last frostbite series and was quite worried about the rust and being out of shape but I guess I was proven wrong.  Some thoughts on today.

In the first 3 races we had a nice southerly breeze that had some velocity changes but did require some hiking.  With the conditions of the day and sailing on that part of the river I have found that during a southerly with an outgoing tide you almost always are faster going downwind closer to the DC side of the river.  This is counter intuitive as you give up being the inside boat but something about the geography of the river makes this work.  I did that in all 3 races and it paid off (my starts were not great).  For starts, the wind and current were about even so it was fairly early to set up and wait at the line.  I did not do this well but did notice it.

Near the end of race 3 our westerly finally came so we reset the course.  The last two races were much tougher.  We had a short start line with a current running down it so there was often a pile up at the pin.  I tried to avoid that and started near the boat mostly.  With a westerly breeze it is always a bit squirrely at the windward mark and today did not disappoint.  Mostly just be ready for anything and lots of place changes.  For our races today mostly the pressure shots were coming from the left so it paid off to be further left.  The port tack tended to be lifted so you wanted to ride that as long as possible.  Also in the shifty conditions, make sure you are looking at boats ahead of you to know what is coming!

Great day out on the water and hope to see everyone out again soon!