2024 FBYC Fall Open
Saturday
Saturday’s weather started with sunny skies, temperatures in the 60 and wind around 14 out of the North. We had a good start near the boat in the first race and quickly tacked to port to clearer air. Rick called a great layline and we found ourselves at the top mark behind only Nanuq and Afterthought. We set the A2 spinnaker downwind and had a good run. At the bottom mark we managed to get a jib sheet on the wrong side of the spinnaker which we didn’t realize until mid-tack so we lost some ground having to abandon the tack. The rest of the race was sailed cleanly to a changed weather mark and only Orion got around leaving us 4th over the line and 4th on corrected.
The second race start was a lot more crowded with Tradition trying a mid-line port start. We were a little late in dodging the traffic, but did well to hold our line between Orion and Excitation as we headed up wind. Other than a hiccup with the second spinnaker set, we sailed pretty cleanly in a very competitive fleet. With boats all around us all race we had to settle for a 6th, and were less than 30 seconds out of 4th on corrected time. Sting (J92s) sailed a great race and was on our tail the whole time and we had a few crosses with them. They would end up having to give us room on the pin at the finish and were 4 seconds behind us, but corrected to 2nd.
By the 3rd race the wind came down a few knots and with all of the boats jammed up at the pin, we got out to the boat end to start. From there we worked our way up the right side of the course staying close to Afterthought just to weather of us. We rounded just behind the pack of boats and worked on hitting our targets and numbers. We also cleaned up the timing of our jibes and got it nice and snappy like I used to do on the J70. We would go ono to finish this race in 6th as well and putting us in 6th overall for the regatta. While the result don’t show it, we sailed very competitively and were 1-2 minutes out of 3rd in every race on corrected time.
Sunday
We returned Sunday for what should have been a distance race. Only there wasn’t any wind nor was there forecast to be. After a brief skippers meeting the signal boat and a couple of sailboats went out to explore. Afterthought tried to so some sailing, but there wasn’t enough to consistently keep the sails full. After about an hour racing was called. We were out there motoring around and returned to the dock to do some work aloft and then called it a day.
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