Today I sailed with Scott Miller’s wife Patty instead of Eileen. Unfortunately my father was sent to the hospital on Friday. I have been visiting and it is kind of difficult as it is a 2 hour drive to San Diego. Eileen, sailed with me yesterday, but had a court appointment this morning. We had arranged, weeks ago, for Patty to sail with me this day. Due to the timing of my father’s hospital stay I was not able to sail the Labor Day weekend regatta that preceded this race. I have been driving back and forth with Eileen. Today she said I should sail and she would go down by herself to see what was up… what a dear! We do not yet know about tomorrow. If I need to get down there in the morning I will miss the sailing. If I can be there in the afternoon I will just miss maybe the last two races. Patty was a bit timorous about sailing with me after a good showing yesterday with Eileen. She did not want to be responsible for us getting out of the top ten. She did great and I really appreciate her enthusiasm and the fun she had, we both had, while sailing…thank you Patty…and not too bad we are in 13th at this time. I think it is okay for never having sailed together and in such difficult conditions. Enough about me what about the sailing?

Today started of with some light winds. The forecast was for similar winds to yesterday which was very light all day. Yesterday we did not even get our diamond wires off the loosest setting. There were four races starting in about 6 knots and building to about 17/18? Yesterday we sailed in the harbor which is sheltered from the swells, pretty much. Today was off the coast of Seal Beach which can give you some confused seas. There is a swell that fetches from the wind and a surf swell that comes in from the south. The wind direction started at 180 and went to 230. At 180 the wind swell is about the same as the surf swell, so no problem. At 230 you can see that there is a 50 degree variant from each other. Challenging conditions for sure but everyone had a great time in them. Even people that flipped as many as three times, maybe more, had smiles on their faces.

All the dinners for this event are at the Yacht Club so there is camaraderie after the races with all the sailors swapping stories of the day. Really great time to sit with people you know on the forums or hear about in the stories.

There were no general recalls today but there were some individual ones. The courses were 1,1,2,2. All races took about 45 minutes to complete, except maybe the second which was about 10 minutes shorter due to increasing wind during the race. All the races were run very well. In the last two races it looked like the weather mark was a ways out there but it did not take too much time to get to it. Well done race committee.

Later,
Dan DeLave sail# 651