Race Report
Point Beals 2013
Wow Incredible Fantastic Insane! Radiant Wins! Takes the bullet, line honors and all the bragging rights on this day. This was a perfect light air day, it had a race start abandoned as the wind quit in mid start sequence, a twenty minute postponement for enough wind to start and anchors. No proper light air race is complete without a good anchoring. Radiant’s next class competitor, Special Purpose also sailed a very good race finishing second in PHRF B, it’s just that Special Purpose was 1 hour 22 minutes and 38 seconds behind Radiant in real time and she owes another 18 seconds a mile to Radiant so add another 11.6X18= 208.8 seconds on corrected time. That’s a lot, that’s a big win.
Tigger was close; a mere 5 minutes and 59 seconds off Radiant too take a win in PHRF A. Kahuna finished 49 minutes and 59 seconds later to finish second in Class A and just fast enough to stay in front on corrected time over Something Special finishing third in Class A. Freedom X finished third in PHRF B five minutes out of second on corrected. But they were not the last to cross the finish line. Jeopardy hung in and finished 13 minutes before the time limit expired giving them a fourth in PHRF A.
The last boat to finish was Lucia exactly 3 minutes and 11 seconds before the time limit ran out and a big winner taking a first Place in the Windseekers Fleet. We horned Silver Breeze on course as they stood second, in sight and arguably 20 minutes out. But the last, last boat was Dulcinea. They ran out of time just 500 feet from the line sailing over 4 knots with the chute up. If I could fudge the rules in this instance I would, but I can’t. This is not the first time Dulcinea has been in this “time limit running out and almost finishing” scenario; which makes it even a little more painful.
Some would say that this was not a perfect light air race, that a perfect light air race needs rain, preferably a drenching constant drizzle. Personally, I think rain is overrated. It was a sunny beautiful day to be on a boat. Thanks so much for sharing.
Point Series Race 1 Point Beals Sept 21st 2013
Billy