SAVASANA Leading J/105s, LITTLE FEAT Winning J/80s
(Key West, FL- Jan. 20th)- Wednesday dawned with promise for a typical, beautiful Key West sailing day but with not much promise for breeze. As the day unfolded the forecasted East to Southeast breeze ultimately materialized late in the day. While Divisions 2 and 3 further east managed to get off two successive races, Division 3 postponed for over an hour to get in their second race.
On the Division 1 course, the light air and very streaky breezes with large holes interspersed between the windier sections wreaked havoc on the standings. In particular, regatta leader in IRC2, David Murphy's J/122 PUGWASH sailed to a 7-7 score to drop themselves into second overall. Robin Team's J/122 TEAMWORK faired a little better with a 5-6 tally for the day to remain in sixth. The principal issues appeared to be the random roll of the dice on breeze, some got it better than others and where significant gains were being made was downwind, hunting down the streaks and staying in them.
The Division 2 course with J/105s and J/80s started out very light for the first race out of the ENE. Like the Division 1 course, there were large streaks of breeze with large holes in between. For the most part, starting at the favored end of the line and tacking into the first streak seemed to pay big time. In the first race, Brian Keane's SAVASANA led a train of J/105s off to the right side of the course and rounded in first place, never to be challenged again, with Damian Emery on ECLIPSE getting second. In the second race, Travis Weisleder on LUCKY DOG got his second 1st place of the series followed by the rapidly improving team on-board Carter Williams' CREATIVE DESTRUCTION. After the days racing, SAVASANA remains in first with a strong 12 point lead over Ken Colburn's GHOST. Lying third after climbing back into the top three is Scooter Simmons on BLACKHAWK just five points back.
The J/80s are still in a seriously close horse race for all the marbles. The top six teams are only eleven points apart with the promise of four races to go to mix it all up again. Still leading after six races are Jeff and Rod Johnstone on LITTLE FEAT by just one point over Glen Darden sailing LE TIGRE and just three points over Will Welles racing RASCAL. Jeff and Rod managed to "be lucky, rather than smart" and get two fourths to maintain their position. Glen managed to say out of trouble with a 6-3 to stay in contention. Al Minella's RELENTLESS seemingly had the crystal ball for the day, getting a 1-2 to ascend into fourth place. Of note, was J/80 sailor John Storck receiving the Paul Washburn Award for "the love of the sport"--- Congratulations to John and Collette! Also, you can read more about what's happening on the J/80 race course by reading
Chuck Allen's Sailing World blog.
The Stock Island located Division 3 course for PHRF boats had similar breezes as Division 2 and saw the southeast breeze develop faster than all the rest of the courses. Again, in PHRF 1, Jim Madden's STARK RAVING MAD took off from the starting line on both races and sailed away with two first places to further extend their significant lead to twelve points over their next closest competitor. SRM now has six straight firsts.
In PHRF 2, Bill Sweetser's J/109 RUSH also extended their lead. RUSH got two more firsts to strengthen their grip on first place with a lead of four points. Steve Thurston's J/29 MIGHTY PUFFIN is hanging in there with a 7-5 but dropped to sixth overall.
In PHRF 3, the three J/24s continue to have fun, close racing amongst themselves despite the difficult wind conditions. Mark Milne's BLAH BLAH BLAH stayed in second with a 2-2 record for the day and just behind is Naroski/LeBlanc's NOJOE in third with a 4-3 tally for Wednesday.
Thursday promises to be the best day of sailing of sailing yet with 15-20 knot winds forecasted and a sunny, partly cloudy day. Stay tuned! For regatta information and sailing results, please go to: http://www.premiere-racing.com/KW10_Results/kw10_results_reports.htm
