"this" being our start line. Let me preface this by saying that I appreciate very deeply the often thankless time and effort the Race Committee puts in on our behalf, and our RC for these Nationals was very well organized and worked extremely well and hard to give us the best races that they could. The main flaw in this race and the subsequent ones was that we were limited to set courses. Having given us Course 1 to Starboard as for the previous race, the RC, in an apparent effort to give us a good start, set the line square to the predominantly east wind. Of course, the problem with this was that this made the start line virtually parallel to our (close-reaching) course to the first mark, and very obviously favoured the pin end which was the entire length of the start line closer to our first mark. What made things worse was our buoys-to-starboard course which meant you had to start on starboard tack to be on the safe side and then tack to port at the very earliest opportunity since every second spent on starboard saw you going backwards away from the first mark. Now this would have been a good place for a "hippety-hop" mark, placed upwind to give us even the shortest of beats to let the fleet get at least slightly sorted out, or better yet, we could, with more flexible course options, have sailed a short beat from #1 (above) to #6 and then peeled off to do the rest of our 2-3-4-S course.

But be that as it may, some of the potential carnage at the pin end was avoided when we got a lengthy dead spot around the pin end. By the time we crossed the line a good minute and a half late, I was able to report to Dan that we were not last - one boat was still (barely) behind us. Small wonder I felt no urge to get the camera out for that Kodak moment! One other thing I seem to remember was that my Breezy "room mates", Neil and Nick were leading the race for much of the way until they sailed into the tricky winds of the final leg.

By the time Dan and I reached #4, we had put a few boats behind us, but were still sitting somewhere near 20th. The good news, though, was that we did have a fine view of some the the boats in front of us sailing into repeated dead spots as they got too close to the windward shore in this easterly wind. With little to lose, we dove down onto a broad reach with the first puff we got after tacking around #4, and did not head back up for the finish line until I had made Dan good and nervous about a third of the way across the lake. But our strategy worked as we ended up passing about a dozen boats.

The top 10 in the 4th race (race 6, officially): This was George Vurno and Joan Reichenbach's moment of glory as they nipped past Neil Robb and Nick Tanis on the final leg to win an exciting finish. The wily veteran, Dave Nickels, did what he needed to do as he placed 3rd, four important places ahead of Robert Krahulik and Steve Craver. This was Bill Selick and Bob Buchtman's best finish of the series as they just edged out Dan Hockenberry and Uncle Al who had closed to within a few yards of the slower moving leaders nearer the windward shore. Just behind Dan were the Vorels, Al and Karel, who nosed out the aforementioned Robert and Steve. Next across the line were Daniel and Brennen Leon in 8th place ahead of of Mark and Peggy Quiniff who in turn nudged out their son, Jim with Mike Stoodley.