Well I'm hooked. So's my crew. I didn't yell at her and we had fun, which were two of three things I did right. As Rob reported, the breeze was very slow to build. We puttered around some on the water and didn't get started until after 2. And oh, what a start it was! 10-minute self-start, four boats, downwind start. Timer hits 0:30 and we're a good five boat lengths from the line, facing away from the line, in irons. I assume the other three boats got a good start, but I would have needed Madeye Moody's magic eye to see it. I couldn't even guess as to how far ahead the H20 was, but I ignored Don's advice and kept running off to the left when the others jibed right. Seemed like minimizing tacks and jibes was the better tactical choice, given our performance at the start, and we had good wind. Got to my wag of a layline and got to the leeward mark about three boat lengths behind the H20. That was thing right number three, everything after was not so good. Made the turn and they ran away double trapped with us sitting on our hull (in retrospect) pinching. Seems like pinching hurts a cat a lot worse than a mono. I did finally open it up about halfway up the leg, but by that time, the 20 had crossed the line. We did get things worked out a little for a while. Flew the hull some, made a couple good tacks and then almost ran over a guy with his kids in a 14ft daysailer. We were looking for the finish buoys on one hull. I was able to dump the main in time and drop below them, but that was scary. Finally made it across the line, very relieved, 15 minutes behind the 20, but ahead of the two H16s. Not sure how it's going to correct out.

We'll definitely be out again after we have to work out some coordination as to who's watching for traffic and who's looking for marks and I have to do something about those auto-recleating jib cleats.