LinGin Places Second on the Race Back from Queenstown

Here's a summary of the race that I provided Towney:

Towney,

The race back was fun, but disappointing. We won the start and lead the race until about 15 min. from the finish when CB jumped ahead of us.

The wind had been 15-20kts out of the N for the morning, and our choice of our No 2 worked well. However, when we rounded the red nun to head back to Baltimore Light, the wind was too far forward for our chute. We held pretty well with both TC and CB (who were 10-15 boat lengths behind) for 4.5 out of the 6 miles. TC had held high with the hopes of popping his chute and charging ahead to the line. CB, on the other hand, took the rhumb line with the idea of holding the jib all the way in. We took something of the middle to minimize our risk, but the wind began to die and we knew we would get rolled if we didn't do something. A headsail change was out of the question as it would take too long. We headed up for a bit and put up our old, narrow spinnaker. (It does better on a close reach than our more full new one.) We were first with the spinnaker up and seemed to be doing quite well. However, as the wind went from 10+kts to less than 2, it swung about 150 degrees aft. Ugh. Between CB having a better angle and his having his big shouldered chute up, we had little hope. It was big seas and no wind, which, by the way, is my least favorite kind of sailing. We held off TC quite well, but couldn't manage CB.

I feel good, because we had a great race and I feel we really covered our bases and did the best we could in those conditions. Had the wind held, or gone forward, I think we would have won.

It was a great weekend to be on the bay!

--Tim

Division: ALBERG 30 (5 boats) (top)

Pos	Sail	Boat	Skipper	Rating	Finish Order	Finish Time	Penalty	Pts
1	57	INFINITY	Charles Currier		1	13:11:04.0		1.0
2	244	LIN GIN	Tim Williams		2	13:12:35.0		2.0
3	247	ARGO	T C Williams		3	13:19:49.0		3.0
4	501	SOLSTICE	Larry Morris		4	13:41:12.0		4.0
DNC	197	LAUGHING GULL	Jonathan Adams		DNC	No Time	DNC	6.0

Start Date/Time = Sunday, September 23, 2007 10:10:00.0, Length (nm) = 13.60