I got to drive the chick-boat on Sunday. Dana’s J/22 Rolex campaign was missing a driver on the second day of the Leukemia Cup regatta. And, because the girls were desperate, they let me fill in. 9 J/22s came out to contest the Leukemia Cup, and Dana’s team was sitting 6th after the first day. They probably figured that, even if I screwed up, we could not fall much lower than 6th.
The first race saw us on the wrong side of a 15 degree shift on the first beat, leaving us with no hope of catching the 2 leaders. We did finish in a respectable 4th place, only a boat length or so behind Tejas, but miles behind Junk Yard Dog and Da Bat.
The wind piped up to a steady 15 knots for the second race, with very few wind shifts. This is probably my favorite condition; backstay, cunningham, halyard tension on, super-vang on, ease the main, bow down and send it. We drag raced up the first beat and were ahead of the fleet by about 5 boat lengths at the windward mark. 4 boats were fighting for second place, which allowed us to extend our lead a little on the downwind, and no-one was going to catch us upwind. We finished the race about 20 boat lengths ahead of the fleet.
Nice way to spend a Sunday.
