Lightning Worlds 2003

Phew, this was quite a day. And Biscayne Bay is usually such a wonderful place to sail. I am going to have to say those immortal words as spoken by everyone who has ever put on a big regatta: It's never like this here!

Okay, so it is light and shifty, big deal. Okay, so it's choppy. And so what if the puffs are invisible on the water?

Fair's fair, however: Bill Faude and George Fisher are both amazingly consistent in this stuff, so I guess it's not impossible. Meanwhile too, SO many people have huge finishes to throw out: Luiz Lebreiro of Brazil had an OCS in Race 2, with a 4th and a 1st place. Dave Starck has a 61 with a pair of threes. Tito Gonzalez has a 31 to throw out with a 1st and a 2nd. If we can get enough races for a throw-out, look for all the standings to change...

Today's first race caught a bunch of OCSs. We had a Windward-Leeward-W-L first race where a shift right after the start made the boat-end the only place to be. The pin-end guys were, by how we saw it, about 3/4 of a mile behind within 10 minutes of the start. UG.

Second race, which seemed promising in terms of the seabreeze filling in, got pretty light, and it was a corner-shooting kind of day. Again, this is just how it looked on our boat, and we had a 13th and a 16th place finish.

Right now, the Ecuadorian Rum party is in full rumba, the music sounds great out by the pool, and they are serving something called "aqua loca"

Must dash.