The big news that I was hiding is that the redress scores from Tuesday were for sailors rendering aid to one another. I was hiding that until we could surprise them with sportsmanship awards at this morning's meeting. Bill Vining assisted Todd Woods, and Mark Herendeen plucked Ben Hall out of the water and returned him to his boat yesterday. We presented them with Sail Newport burgees, and Zhik will be following up with some gear. (I learned a great many things working with PU for all those years...)

As for the carnage, some collisions, lots of capsizing, other causes appear to be more mysterious.

Breeze was whistling through the rigging this morning, so we stayed close (Potter Cove, South of Gould Island), with an initial plan to stop after two races.

The first race wasn't bad at all, so we hung in to run two more (three total). The wind built from 10-12 in the first race to 16-18 in the third.

Matt Struble's string of bullets was finally stopped by Lars Guck, who won Races 6 and 7.

Ken Marshack has had the best starts (by far) all week. He's currently 6th overall, on a Classic. Get him on a foiler, and there's going to be some trouble!

Forecast tomorrow is softer, and northerly. We're going to start at 1100, as the breeze is expected to shift East and drop in the mid-afternoon. Two more are scheduled, and needed for a second throwout.

The other big news today, Bora Gulari was found turtled and dismasted in the first race. We got him squared away and tied to a lobster pot, while Sail Newport sent a boat out to tow him in.

This happened as the wind was building, so there was no way I was letting one of my two RIBs get tied up as a tow truck. They all knew that we'd be anchoring carnage, that was decided at a pre-regatta meeting with the class, and discussed at the skippers meeting on Monday. We offered him an anchor, but he elected to grab a pot.

Incidentally, at the meeting this morning, Bora noted some concern about racing in the closer area, due to weeds that were present over the weekend. There were nearly zero weeds today due to the wind direction, and he'd have been sitting all day at Halfway Rock waiting for a tow...

Mike