August 23rd & 24th

The Havre de Grace regatta was great fun. Fleet 192 has a great sailing area
and they are a real friendly bunch. The team of Jason Werner, Garrett Pensell,
Myrl Stone, Pat Phelan, Karen L'Empereur, Vince Tunrow and others put on a
great event.

Laser Sailor, David Teale, and new Lightning owner, Jennifer Parrow, and I
sailed together for the first time and had some great (and not so great races).
Since David had only been out on a Lightning a couple of times and Jennifer
hasn't done foredeck, we got out quickly and did the Frank Gallagher drill of
sets, gybes, gybes, more gybles, and douses.

Then we looked over to the committee boat and saw a yellow flag up -- oops its
the I flag. That means we are somewhere between 4 and 1 minute to the start.
Oh oh. We got to the vicinity of the committee boat in time to see that flag
go down signaling 1 minute to the start. Phew. Most of the 21 boat are at
the pin end and so we just accelerate and get a good fast start in the middle
of the line. While the boats at the pin end are ahead, we are doing well.
Upwind, we watch the compass and tack on the shifts up the middle. Before we
know it we are going around the windward mark first. Wow! From there we
extend our lead and along with a boat from Riverton leave every one else
behind. What a great feeling! I warn David and Jennifer that we can't beat
that for the rest of the weekend. And, yes, we did have our ups and downs for
the rest of the weekend and I felt good to hang onto 5th place -- and we were
only 4 points out of 2nd place! If we had only not dropped 5 boats by going
left on the last leg of race of race 4.... :-) (You know..the big one that got
away.)

Lessons learned: First, don't put sun cream on your forehead. When you sweat
it drips into your eyes and stings. Then you lose focus on the racing and
everything crumbles. I'm sure that's why I went left in race 4 ... Second,
and more seriously, adapt to the conditions. On Sunday, the wind went lighter
and the chop increased. I should have shifted my focus more to keeping the
boat moving and paid less attention to the compass. But, the compass was so
good to us on Saturday, that it was hard to let go and I threw in way too many
useless tacks that just stopped the boat.

David flew the spinnaker beautifully and we regularly picked up boats or
distance downwind. Jennifer was catlike on the foredeck and dealt calmly with
my changes of mind like "Lets gybe-set. No belay that. Pole up" or "Lets
gybe. Oops, here comes the leeward mark. Jib up. Forget the pole. We'll
gybe without it. Blow the halyard. Jib. Jib. I need jib. Let the halyard
run." She kept the jib powered up through waves and trimmed for pointing when
the puffs came. The wind was up and down and both she and David were great
about moving their weight from side to side so that I could stay sitting on the
rail and, presumably, looking out for wind and waves.

Fun regatta. Put it on your list for next year.

Nabeel