(San Diego, CA)- Nicole Breault and team simply dusted off some of
California's top match racers in San Diego, winning her maiden voyage in
the first weekend of the three part California Dreamin’ match racing
series racing in J-22s. Here's the report from Nicole on how it all
went down:"We had pretty solid wind (for San Diego) from the west, 7 to 12 knots. The competition was great! Some of the teams had minor boat and sail handling issues the first day, but those issues disappeared the second day and we had to fight hard in every race.
We had some trouble winning starts on the second day, and in our early wins we had to come from behind. We lost to Nick Dougdale and David Storrs back to back and had to rally as a team to overcome the slump and win our last two races. We nailed our start against Dan Aeling and sailed away for the first of those wins. That pumped us up big time!
Our
last race was against Dustin Durrant's team for overall winner of the
regatta. We split off the line, and in the duel up the first beat we
prevailed and rounded the top mark first. The course was a bit skewed
and we gambled that the pressure was better to the left looking upwind
and gybed first. It was a mistake, the breeze dropped off, and Dustin
rolled up to our lee stern and pinned us above layline. We slowed to
make the 17 overlap, got it, flagged, he did the double gybe, pinned us
again, we reestablished a 17, flagged and he got a penalty (perhaps
should have been a red flag penalty). We rounded behind him and trailed
closely up the beat. On the second run, he made a fatal mistake dropping
his chute to come attack us on white sails with to big a gap between
the boats. We just sailed away to win! He lost the lead and had to
re-hoist his chute to chase us down, but we were already gone." Nicole and the other teams are continuing the next step to participate in the US Match Racing Championship Area GHJL Quarter-finals and Semi-finals, sailing all three events (if they qualify) in J/22 one-design class sailboats. The dates are April 14-15 at St. Francis Yacht Club (StFYC); May 12-13 at San Diego Yacht Club (SDYC); and the Semi-Finals on June 2-3 at San Francisco Yacht Club (SFYC) in J-22s! Sailing Photo Credits- Kirsten Stahl. For more J/22 Cal Dreamin sailing information.
