By Chris Snow - Day 1 Cold and Light Breeze
Final count at the J/24 Midwinters here is 63 boats. The first day of racing dawned cold with temps in the low 30's when we pulled up to the Y.C. Conditions for the first day were moderate to light breezes out of the North to Northeast and quite shifty. The breeze is blowing off the land from this direction so the water in quite flat too.
This makes for close racing with a lot of ups and downs as the breezes shift through 30-40 degrees upwind and down. Onboard our boat we started off with a bang rounding the first weather mark with a nice lead. This quickly evaporated as the breeze filled from behind bringing the fleet up to us. This kind of set the tone for the day for the whole fleet as the lead and positions throughout the fleet changed constantly. Sailing in this stuff requires a lot of patience and a good sense of humor. Because the water is so flat we have out boat set up to point high, traveler up high, mainsheet trimmed tight. We work hard to play the jib easing slightly in lifting puffs to keep the boat going fast and trim as we come up with the lift.
As we left the club at 6:30 scores were not posted but guys who I know managed to hang in there were Stuart Jardine from the UK, Geoff Moore from Rhode Island and Tom Sitzman from Annapolis. Brad Read had some great comebacks and is up in the top of the fleet too. We scored a 10,4 and around a 25th which probably puts us around tenth going into today. Looks like the wind is out of the North again today as I write this so it should be interesting with lots of opportunities to move up! More later!
By Chris Snow - A good practice day
Hi,
Chris Snow here writing from Tampa, FL getting ready for the start of the 2000 J/24 Midwinters. This regatta is being sailed out of Davis Island Yacht Club very close to downtown Tampa, FL. Very nice club with great volunteers organizing the event. This club has a birth/rebirth of it's J/24 fleet with around 15 boats competing in local races.
I arrived on Saturday night and for the last few days have been setting up out boat, practicing and working with my North One Design cohort, Tim Healy on a new North Sails J/24 sailing video. We have been working hard to get as much video footage as possible under the guidance of our videographer, Greeg Geiger. I am really excited about this video, much of it is shot from onboard the boats as I am sure it will give a lot of J/24 sailors insights into how to sail their boats that simply cannot be done in a classroom or even on the water clinic.
Tim is sailing the first new J/24 out of US Watercraft. The boat looks great! Basically a cross between the last boats TPI built and the Italian boat, Paolo Boido builds with some other new ideas thrown in too. It looks like the boat comes really ready to sail right out of the box which will be a big plus!
So far the weather here had been a bit on the brisk side! Temps tonight are expected to be in the lower thirties but from here on out the locals promise a increase in the air temperature. There are around 60 boats here from all over the country, many boats were delayed getting here by the blizzard they have been having up and down the East Coast.
The RC is calling for 12 races over the next three days. They really have their work cut out for them but it will be fun to get in a bunch of races. Looks like the conditions, if the breeze it out of the North as it was today will be quite flat water and really shifty. It is amazing how high you can point in a J/24 in flat water something that take a little getting used to coming from sailing alot in the ocean. I was working on that today keeping the boat high, and flat and need to get better at it.
We are using a new spinnaker design which I so far am really happy with. We have made the bottom section of the sail quite full especially near the lower leech and significantly flattened and narrowed the head of the sail, the sail really looks good with the pole pulled way aft and the top of the sail flys really nicely too. Seems to go pretty fast too.
1st start tomorrow is at 10:00. We will definitely have all our gear on as we head out. More tomorrow!