Thames YC - Commodore's Trophy Sunday 091105 Wind: South 6 to 10 knots Current: flood 1104 North Hill, ebb 1643 Course: Vixen to Silver Eel (2 laps) Distance: 11.6 nm Crew ? Seth-foredeck, Megan-trim & RW Reaching down the line on port, we tacked directly on Euphoria?s stern with a minute to go and ahead of Rusty Nail. Euphoria pulled away and crossed about a quarter of the way down the line, while we were a bout 20 seconds short of the line at the gun, yet in clean air. Rusty Nail not able to roll us was forced to tack away, and the rest of our class slowly pulled way in the 6 to 8 knot breeze.
It took us about an hour to get down to Silver Eel where we set in a bearaway and jibed shortly there after. In retrospect, if we had taken more of a cue from the Ensign fleet (starting five minutes ahead of us), we may have done better. They appeared to sail in near the shore of Fishers. We elected not to as it looked to be little wind near shore. With Megan doing the majority of the spinnaker trim, four jibes got us back to Vixen in 35 minutes for a smooth douse and rounding. Finding Irish Lady stalled in our path caused a tack to starboard earlier than planned.
On the second lap with the wind veered more to the west, starboard took us all the way to Fishers where two ports set us up on the lay line. We rounded with a jibe-set that carried us short of a final starboard jibe across the finish line. As it was we finished fifth out of seven on corrected time, and a little less than two minutes behind Mentor in fourth.
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