Having gotten back from 2 weekends of some very fun sailing and even better parties I figured I would relay some of the events from our side.


Hiram’s was my first race when we moved to Florida and still always one of my favorite. No to demading, no ground crew issues and a great party. On Sat it was a downwind reach with gusty winds coming through in the upper 20’s. With our weight we were not able to point up high enough to carry the chute down the river, so we tried to jib reach up and run spin down deep. After multiple miraculous saves and 2 rather violent flips and some broken trap lines Gina refused to pull the spin any more. Everyone was out of visual site, so we decided to limp down the rest of the way. We did this for about a half hor before seeing a few sails and I slowly kept adding a little more sheet tension quietly trying to get back in the mix. As we watched a couple of the boats go over in front of us we managed to claw our way back to a respectable finish for such an ominous start, and had a great party anyway. Sunday was blowing dead on the nose at about 15-20. We had a great start with team Tybee and the 2 of us left the rest of the fleet behind and had a great tacking duel for almost ¾ of the race. We got a head on a nice lift early and managed to hold itfor a little awhile, and when they were starting to slowly put a little distance on us they ran aground rather violently. We got stuck in the same spot but with the advanced warning and shorter boards were able to limp through the shallows and get back ahead. At about the ¾ point on the return the wind lightened up and got very switchy. Tybee was able to take off on us then as their bigger rig kept them pretty much double trapped when we were in and out. One of the I20s and 1 of the F18s were also able to catch up and pass us through this section. The wind did come back up right at the end though and we were able to repass the F18 and almost caught the I20 again as they took the high end of the finish and we played the lift and they got us by a few seconds.


The Area D turned out to have a pretty good showing with a lot of teams capable of walking away with it. Saturday morning the forcast was for big gusty winds out of the North east. That morning we rigged while looking over some very nasty conditions on the bay making everyone just a bit apprehensive. After spending the previous weekend on Saturday of Hiram's haul upside down trying to carry the spin I know we were. According to the committee boat it was blowing about 16 with gusts coming through up to about 25, so the conditions when we finally got out there were not bad. On the first race I managed to nail the start, and was second to A only about 1/2 a boat length behind Woody Cope on an A cat. I took a big puff down the shore and when I went to jibe we were right in the middle of a bunch of moored boats. I was watching them and not the jibe so I over did it and we went over in a puff before either one of us could get over to the new high side. That was it, Gina was release happy and I ended up driving a bit over conservative the rest of the day but we were still doing pretty well ending the day tied with a very well sailed H16 for 3rd. I then screwed up first thing on Sunday too getting into a personal battle with 1 of the F18s and pushed it too close to the finish pin which we then hooked and caused a huge bog up at the finish line costing us a number of places. There were also some near heart attacks as we were stuck in a slow tack on the finish line, that was now only 1 boat length wide due to us hooking it, and a group of about 5 more boats all screaming in to the line looking for room. Luckily everyone knew their business and no damage was done, except to my ego.

I think the Blade showed very well, and there was no point where we felt we were out of contention in any race due to the boat. Even though it is a 16 foot boat portsmouth or not we were mixing it up boat for boat with everyone, no numbers game here. We were able to point with everyone except the top 2 A cats. JC and Kenny on the I20 were just a little faster on Sun as it lightened up, but in the blow we lost very little going to weather. The big boats were beating us downwind in the blow but it was mostly my driving that caused this, we were a lot faster as it lightened some on Sunday. Most of the regatta even up, it was Tybee, Kelly and Olli and us with the M20 once and while and an occasional other boat thrown in F18, I20 or A. JC and Kenny have been have been doing the Tybee thing now for a while, they switched places for this regatta and on Sunday really found the new groove. Kelly and Olli moved to Tampa to train year round and hired Robbie Daniels to coach them. Both these teams sailed excellent races and deserved the wins. Our practice consists of a race maybe once a month, so on the whole I feel pretty good about the results.

I think the boat showed well and even though I still get a bunch of crap from a few people on it being too small a boat for their weight or height or whatever, a few less people are taking them seriously now.

Matt