Potomac River Sailing Association
2009 President's cup
September 12-13
Lightning Class Series Summary
Pl Sail # Skipper 1 2 3 4 5 6 T
1 14566 Frank Gallagher, Mladen Karcic, Brenna Copeland 1 1 1 1 (9) 2 6
2 15142 Nabeel Alsalam, Stefano DeLeo, Craig Huzway 3 2 (6) 2 2 4 13
3 14627 John Pemberton, Will Phillippe, Brian Ganji 2 5 5 4 3 (8) 19
4 14592 John Butler, Diane Butler, Hayden Temin 6 (8) 4 3 5 3 21
5 14222 Russ Roberts, Alan Rukin, Kristen Lopez 5 4 2 (15\RAF) 6 5 22
6 15195 Pat McMcGee, Paul Maher, Laura Lake (10) 3 10 5 4 1 23
7 14553 Rick Welch, Kevin Webb, Oraya Chantanaskul (9) 9 3 8 1 7 28
8 14 Rob Bennett, Scott Snyder, Steve Yelland 4 6 7 9 11 (15\DNS) 37
9 15256 Jeff Storck, Bruce Heida, Becky Mach 8 7 8 6 8 (11) 37
10 14932 Red Fehrle, David Fehrle, Suzan Humphrey 7 10 9 7 (13) 9 42
11 15228 David Thompson, Joe Kimak, Barb Thompson, Catherine Calvin 11 11 11 10 10 (12) 53
12 14395 Bob Wilbur, Larry Bradley, Trey Powers (15\DNC) 15\DNC 15\DNC 15\DNF 7 6 58
13 14622 Eric Heitman, Jeremy Seitz, David McKaskil 12 12 12 (15\DNS) 15\DNS 15\DNS 66
14 15052 Chan Swallow, Beau Swallow, Aiden Fitzsimon, Jack Franchi (15\DNC) 15\DNC 15\DNC 15\DNS 12 10 67

13 Sep, '09, 21:41
St. Pete Scorer

We had two excellent sailing days on the water, with northerly winds 12 - 15 on Saturday, with gusts to 20, and gentler winds, 9 - 12 on Sunday. Also on the line were 12 Albacores; 7 Buccaneers; 4 Flying Scots; 5 Hamptons; 2 Hobies; and 7 Lasers.

High tide was at 2:43 PM on Saturday and at 3:55 PM on Sunday.

PRO Mike Heinsdorf and his ace RC did an excellent job of moving things along on both days,  and getting us aback to the docks in time for the Leukemia Cup party on Saturday and the PRSA post-race picnic on Sunday.

RC included:

PRO Mike Heinsdorf
Drivers Jim Graham, Bill Buck
Helpers Cheryl Taylor; Cathy Bleakly; Maryann Gallagher; Tom Berlin; Nathan Marsh; and Bill Swanson.

Saturday Winds:

Sunday Winds:

Winner's Perspective - by Frank Gallagher:

We went out the two previous wed night sailings and got in some good practice…especially mark rounding’s with spin up/down..(windward and leeward)…lots of spin jibing…we found ourselves not doing well jibing on deck…so after lots of failed attempts with inside the boat jibes, we finally developed a process that worked well for us… Crew rotation practice…..both Brenna and Mladen do foredeck or middle, so when something goes wrong during the race, both are aware of what’s wrong and how to fix it…(Brenna made a great save when our spin sheet went under the boat during one take down….could have been a catastrophic foul-up…..!!!) We cleaned the boat real well sat morning…got out a little early and got a little practice in…. As for the race itself…nothing too special…we were lucky…but prepared and ready to take advantage of all opportunities on the course We checked the line before the starts…decided where we wanted to start and got mostly good starts and just work our way upwind. There were lots of shifts to play and that helped us catch up several times…..Mladen is foredeck and always looking forward for windshifts, pressure and what other boats are doing…Brenna is middle and looking around beside and behind us for other boats, there angles and speed…

We live by 3 rules in this order……

1…always drive the fastest path to the next mark…(be on the favored tack..)find pressure

2….always trim all sails for max speed….lots of gear changing..ease in light stuff…trim as pressure builds..centerline boom…constantly adjust the spin…always on the edge of a luff….

3….boat balance…fair amount of heal in real light stuff…dead flat in the heavy stuff….anticipate…don’t react…lots of heal to round the leeward mark in light to medium…
And oh yeah….avoid conflict..no boat banging..or killer mistakes like OCS or protests…

And above all we have fun as a team.

Frank