What can I say? We had a pretty bad finish in the 2nd race today because I choose to lower the sail before the start because the top batten was loose. As soon as the sail hit the trampoline, the horn went off! We tanked a 34th place finish because we were terribly late to the line.

So we got mad - real mad. In fact, we're still not sure what we have done differently but two top 6 finishes in the last two races in a double trapped breeze was something very new for us! We started each race by going left starting about 3/4 the way toward the pin end of the line...getting clear air. David worked the main sheet and chastized me anytime I started pinching. We weren't pointing as well as the other boats around us but it wasn't hurting us because we had great speed. We banged the corner and headed for A. When we got there, we had a few boats on our hip and two boats tacked in front clear - Jacques and Greg and Nigel and Alex! We tacked onto port about 4 boat lengths away from A mark. Two boats tucked in under us at a - they may have not had overlap at the two boat length circle but I wasn't concerned. We reached the short distance to the offset mark and David made the most beautiful spinnnaker set you've ever seen. We had 30 yards on the other boats by the time they were moving with only Jacques and Shafer ahead. We held this around the course and finished third - elated and hooping it up over the finish line!

The next race went similarly. The start was congested and a lot of collisions took place. Mike Krantz and David Lennard had a boat drive over their stern pushing them ahed on our right without steerage when about 4 boats drove under us within 8 inches of each other with every one screaming "up up up!". We couldn't hedge David and Mike because they had a boat impaled over their rear beam and we had another boat ride a bow over a wave and land on top of our rudder arm. We heard the sound of gel coat scraping away and "thump thump thump" as the bumper boat command took over. David wisely advised me to forget it - 22 seconds to go! We ran down the line accelerating away from this fray. We started with a Tiger on our windward hip and clean air. We footed slightly and outran our windward Tiger to get clear. Nigel and Alex had gotten a terrific start and were barely within shouting distance ahead. We tacked for A mark and cleared all the starboard tackers behind. We round A in fourth and held that position, slightly distancing the boats behind us for the next two laps. While approacing the last A-mark rounding, we watched as Alex and Nigel cought the anchor rhode on the A mark and stopped. Trying to focus on boat speed we both agreed to disregard it and stay focused. David then let me call the layline to A and I left us tacking pretty tight to the mark. We pinched up when we got there to leave some extra room for the anchor line. Turns out that we didn't leave ~quite~ enough room as we snagged the mark too! It was anchored FIRMLY and David and I both lost our balance on the trapeze nearly capsizing the boat. David ran and raised the board quickly clearing us within seconds. As we were speeding up and heading for the offset with two boats fairly close behind, a third (who's heading for A) says "Wanna see turns!". We jibed at the offset and realized we have room to do our turn. We hammered the quickest damn 360 you've ever seen but the two boats behind us JUST got around. We held our position downwind. We could have gone more into attack mode by David going on the Trapeze wire but I was more concered about driving deep and getting to the finish line safely - 6th place not being too bad for us carolina boys.