Lightning Rod Racing

A picture is worth a thousand words....

Seriously, the most important item on today's post is that Deborah appears to be fine. She did injure her knee and we are concerned about that, otherwise, the injury we, the EMTs and the Doctor thought was a compound fracture was just a nasty tearing wound. Though it looked bad it will heal. We had a fantastic day on the water and it was such an awful punctuation to be as concerned for a friend as I was for Deborah. Roy, she didn't even whimper, the race was over before the injury, but I will tell you, we have two women with us that definitely belong on the boat. They are valuable crew.

Today's first race was as exciting as class racing gets. We started a bit down the line in clear air just above the other S2 and the Mac 30, which is proving to be good competition. we had a screaming upwind and rounded first be a fair margin. The first downwind was uneventful, we neither gained or lost much ground. The second upwind started with a heavy rain shower and gusts to 28. It was hard to find the course changed weather mark and we played it safe by going up the middle. The rest of our fleet stayed right which seemed to be favored today and the other S2 rounded only a couple boat lengths behind. The took our air and forced us to gybe off. We lost by 12 seconds.

The second race was 5 legs with an upwind finish. We had five good legs and finished with 1:50 on the Mac 30 (corrected) and 1:58 on the 3rd place S2. Our 2nd and first gave us three points for a win in the first ever Key West for me, Deborah, Stu and Lightning Rod. I can't thank the whole crew enough. I get to keep a great trophy, but trust it belongs to the whole crew and even the many people back home that have done so much to make us better sailors.