Chicago - Waukegan Race(s)

I know I'm a bit behind in the updates but, here is the news from the Chicago-Waukegan Race...

On Saturday, we started with some rain that became light winds that eventually filled into about 10+ kts. We initially tried to stay close to shore but, in order to avoid a dead spot in the middle of the course we went out. We traded jibes with Sorcerer and at one point they were at least 100 yards ahead of us. However, we never gave up and on the last leg, with the wind filling in, we passed them about 1.5 nautical miles from the finish. We were feeling good and great confidence until we traded a tack with Tall Grass. It turns out the boats that went in shore had already beaten us by 30 minutes. But, we must think positive... we beat Sorcerer and Paradigm Shift!

On Sunday, it was more of the same weather. Initially, we stayed close to shore and we were the lead boat about 30 minutes into the race. However, the wind filled in from the East (something that none of the meterologists had predicted) and all of the boats outside of us (pretty much the entire fleet) made out like bandits. However, we never gave up. We were short handed that day but, we managed to do set the asymmetric, peel to the big chute, douse to the code 1, change to the 2, back to the 1, back to the 2, back to the 1, and finish just as the storms to the north sucked all the wind, i.e. NO WIND!. Then we got all the sails down before the rain hit us. We may have come in at the bottom of the fleet but, we didn't drop out (unlike the 5 boats in our section that did.)

- Splash