We had our last race of DRW last night. The same triangle course that we’ve had in the past nights.  EXCEPT it was a windward start…actually it was a reach.  We were right on the start.  Had to change the side that we were going to launch the chute and that is when it went a little afoul.  I am not ratting anyone out, but the Spinnaker came out of the cabin sideways.  Someone had the halyard on the wrong end of the Spinnaker…I hope no one got a picture of that.  I know many of the boats saw it, as they reminded me of it during the after party.

Jamie was on the boat again, but this time he had a J-O-B…he was going to fly the spin tonight.  Spencer had an oppertunity to go do some offshore sailing and he took it.  Jamie has been on the Olson exactly 2 times, and I think he has only been on a sail boat only a handfull of times.  Now he was in charge of flying the spin during more than 2/3 of the race.  The man handled the pressure like a champ.

Needless to say, he didn’t understand what had happened when we launched the chute and it came out sideways.  We did manage to get it back in the boat and fix the foul up.  we relaunched and Jamie went to work.  We were flying the VMG spinnaker and it was exactly what we needed.  we reached the first mark, Gybed around the mark started heading to the second mark.

Once Jamie and I got on the same channel, we started to fly down the leg.  We caught up to some of the boats that we were after and actually managed to pass a couple of the boats, cuz as usual, we were the last boat on the course.

We are coming close to the second mark and we take down the spinnaker…F’ing Virginia brought that thing down like a CHAMP…we had the 155  up and started for the mark…we took it a bit wide but that helped us have good speed after the mark.

Peter had the headsail dialed in.  I mean that thing was perfect and you could feel the boat just picking up speed and heading right to the mark…SWALE and HotsyTotsy were in front and we were going after them.  Swale tacked across us and showed that he was 5 or 6 boat length in front of us.  Hotsy sped toward the shoreline for speed, but we kept on the line toward the mark.  Next thing I know Swale has tacked back, and is now only a couple of boat lengths in front of us, but they are on top of us.

Hotsy tacks right towards us, but we had them by an inch or two so they had to tack below us.  We took over them, but still had Swale to contend with.  I was not going to lose my concentration cost us this time.  My eyed stayed on the telltales and the mark.  WE WERE RIGHT ON THE LINE!  Swale fell back and now we were safe from them…next target was just to makeup as much places as we could.

We tacked around the mark and put the chute back up…unfortunately it did nothing for us…now August Blaze was trying to come around us…I was not going to let that happen…yeah…mistake…trying to keep them from passing us cost us boat speed…now Hotsy was back on our heels…CRAP!!!  The wind was kinda weird…so we brought down the Spinnaker and hoisted the Genny…

All of a sudden, the boat picked up and started to GO!  We ended up passing a couple of other boats and finishing.

If Thursday was in the top 5 days on the boat, today definitely made the same list.  It just felt so cool to come back from behind and make up for some early mistakes.

WHAT A GREAT WEEK OF RACING…

A very sincere thanks to everyone that made it out to crew on Speedster…a Very Special thanks to Peter and Virginia, and Dwight.  They came out every night and worked their butts off…I owe you all BIG!!!

Also, Skiles and Woody, thank you both for coming in and helping me with tuning the boat and my driving skills. The things you thought me will not be forgotten.

Spencer and Jamie, you guys ROCK…thank you so much for flying the Chute…I cant wait to have you both on the again.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU…

The Skipper