Recaps - Crystal Lake MC Fleet Racing (contributed by Jon Pomerleau

Location: Blogs MC Fleet 4 Recaps
Posted by: Fleet 4 Administrator	7/3/2007 9:35 AM
I finally got some fleet racing started in the MC this past weekend. Interesting to say the least. The morning conditions can be pretty crazy as the wind hasn't figured out what it is going to do for the day. After lengthy postponements and resetting of the course we started in a light breeze Saturday. On the first leg the wind went 50 degrees right and quickly went to 15 mph. You know which side of the course I was on as I finished 9th out of 15! While the weather was goofy again Sunday my results were better. With a good breeze and waves I put Pearce on. After postponing, resetting, etc... the wind went 3-6. I could not dump Pearce, but he got on the low side and we did our best DM imitation. We picked the shifts, we dodged the holes, we rolled the boat together and ended up with a 2 despite the load (more on a pending conflict). The breeze settled to a nice 8-10 for the second race. I started at the pin, found a lefty, ducked a few boats and never saw them again. A couple of boats did a Scott T. corner on the final beat while I was covering 3 competitors. They nipped me as I got a solid 3. The previous race was a downwind finish where I intentionally worked outside a pack of boats heading for the finish and then came in at the mark on the left side of the course (looking upwind). Another competitor flopped onto starboard right near the mark. My understanding was that passing or rounding a downwind finish mark was no different than a leeward gate situation, where the inside boat has rights at the mark. He could have hit me in the rear port quarter as I slipped by the mark, so he had to avoid me. He claimed he had rights to run me into the beach if he wanted to. Having just done an E downwind finish in 20 mph breeze with similar boat speeds, I can only imagine what could happen if an E skipper tried an aggressive move like that! I know we sometimes do a downwind finish on the first race at LESC and this might be a good rule for everyone to understand when it comes to overlaps at finishing marks (the linked article here from Dick Rose will help - see Kafuffle portion). http://www.sailingworld.com/from-the-experts/rules/off-the-wall-incidents-at-the-offset-mark-and-the-finish-42992.html

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