Biscayne Bay is probably one of my favorite places to sail.  The conditions are usually sailable and challenging.  This year, in addition to Star sailing and training, I am sailing in the Etchells fleet as a crew for Bill Hardesty. Etchells are a great fleet and the Jaguar Cup events usually bring in 50+ boats.  While the level is not quite as high as the Star fleet from top to bottom the boats at the top usually have some very good talent and sail at a high level.  This was the 3rd Etchells event I have ever sailed, so luckily we had a day of practice prior to racing to work the kinks out.  The next day we had a nice 12 to 15 knots on the bay and three good races.  With steady breeze and small wind shifts, the real trick to the race course was getting off the line clean, keeping the boat fast at all times, and getting around the leeward gate well.

We managed to do this well in the first 2 races and we were tied for 1st.  In the third race, we were a little late getting into our pre-start routine and as a result botched our start and rounded about 15th.  Downwind we were pretty quick, with Quentin Strauss trimming the spin and Bill doing a tidy job getting us around the leeward gates while I did my best not to monkey up the spin pole and keep us in a clear lane.  We managed to get ourselves back into 6th place for the finish. We ended day one tied for 2nd on points but losing out on the tiebreaker and therefore dropping to third.  Sunday we were fired up to move up in the standings but no races were sailed due to lack of breeze.

In addition to the Etchells sailing, I was able to fit in two days of Star sailing with Brian Cramer and Matt Johnston from Canada and their coach, Chris Cook.

January will be a busy month with some more Star training planned in the first part of the month, coaching a women’s match race team in the USSTAG OCR qualifier, sailing the Sid Doren Etchells event and then Miami OCR.