Heading back uphill in the best breeze of the race
A tight start (that's us in the back)
I'll be out of town next week and Dangerous goes back in the following, so this was my last race on Red Baron for a while. We started the race in moderate conditions with the #3, aiming to make conservative calls with a large, pretty green crew. So much for the conservative calls at the start, as a favored boat end and a number of jostling starters resulted in me sticking the boat in the back of a large pileup, with mere feet to spare between competitors. Our mast man helped in making very timely calls, and we were able to start clean with no contact. Several boats were over early, but RC handled the flags incorrectly so they were able to get away with doing so on this one.
We sailed a solid, if slightly slow upwind leg, and executed a nice spin set. We doused and headed upwind again, but found the #3 to be a little soft for the conditions and couldn't build speed like I wanted to. We managed another clean spin set, and ended in 6th of 8. Not our best effort, but not awful given the circumstances. Of course there are no excuses in sailing, but I suspect we may have gained a couple places had everyone started fairly...