I guess I'm due to tell what happened as best I know.

I had come around A mark in good shape and jibed immediately as that was the favored tack with the wind shift to go almost directly to C mark. I was getting close to the start finish line and had to figure out how to get around it efficiently. I was rolling downwind flying hull on Port. I heard someone calling starboard around me and was looking all around for which boat it was. I dodged a multicolored Hobie Wave by ducking deep less than 30 seconds before impact. I was probably doing 23-28mph at the time. At that speed on a 1.1 mile course you can be at C mark in about 2.5 minutes because the wind had shifted right. I tell you I had my head up and was looking around for boats. That's about the time I saw Dave's Wave right in front of me as if it had materialized out of thin air. I had about 2 seconds to do something and realized a move up or down was still going to impact him. I made sure I wasn't going to hit any people and braced for impact. I hit him hard with one hull and impacted with the other hull also. A classic T-boning. Dave never saw me and I never saw him before it was too late.

I race in big crowds all the time with mono's and multi's. I'm very used to dodging other boats. I'm not sure what the issue was. It wasn't that I had my head up my butt like usual though. I honestly think there was just too much traffic. When you are racing and checking 100 things at once it's hard to do it all.

I apoligized to Dave and sailed for shore with a big hole in my bow. Saw Dave on shore and looked at his boat. I couldn't find where I impacted that Hobie Wave.

I think Rick's plan to get us away from the other course is a good one. I think next year with a 3 day event they will draw a lot more boats from the North.

Is there a bigger racing area further out from Founders? With more boats and good wind a longer course would be nice. Though I can't complain about the race course much. They were doing a good job. The biggest issue was having to avoid the start/finish line. This caused us to have to jump out on trap and reach to the Pin and then we sometimes had to drop our chute to get to C mark. This makes for a silly train of boats. Another thing they could have done is pull the start mark after all the starts were finished.

If you end up doing the square race course thing please have different colored marks for the ones off to the left of the main course. When you are flying a chute it's easy to get confused to which mark you are going to if they are the same color.

A good friend of mine lives right next to Founders and has a powercat fishing boat. He is a long time racer (P19, F25C) that is retired at the moment. He said he would be happy to help next year even run a course if you want it. I can give you his contact info off line.