(Letter to Jim Wells 4/29/03 regarding 2003 Southwestern regionals at Cross Lake Louisiana)
Hi Jim,
I'm sending this note from my folks' place in AR. We had really light winds, NE on Saturday morning. They started the first race and ended up abandoning it before the first mark rounding. The winds filled in from the NW a little in the afternoon, but got very, very shifty. We had a beat the first leg, we rounded the mark just behind Andy Katz and Sammy Trahan in Andy's boat. They tryed to fly the 'chute, we didn't, and we passed them; the wind had shifted to a close reach. Then we hit a bad, bad patch of air and they passed us...We ended up reaching, beating, the rest of the race, never caught up with them, although we were right on their transom at the last mark rounding. They beat us by three minutes at the finish! We were second ahead of Lloyd and Manuel (only four boats, alas.)
We went back to the dock and proceeded to drink too much that night. They had a great band. Sammy was lusting after the lead singer... By the way, expect to get a bit of crap from him about Buckwheat the next time you see him...
The next day we had more wind coming from the SE; probably 5-10kts. Andy pretty much walked away with it, and we made some bad moves. We ended up second again. I did almost pull a "Russell Coutts" on Andy. We were running down wind, overlapped, both on starboard, with Andy to weather. The wind veered and I chose to gybe. Andy did not, and they slowly pulled ahead of us. As soon as they were clear ahead, I luffed up and almost rolled them to weather.
The third race we did a little worse and ended up third, behind Lloyd. We were last for a bit, but passed Manuel at a leeward mark rounding with some excellent spinnaker takedown work.
The last race we couldn't catch Andy again. He said it was because of Sammy's tactics, which I have no doubt is true, but his boat is a bit faster than mine upwind. Downwind, I think we have a chance. If it hadn't been for Sammy I might have beaten him once. We were almost third, but on the last leg, we were running downwind and a J/24 was coming up to round the turning mark. Our finish was to leeward of that. I tohught we were screwed and that the J/24 would luff us up. We were less than a boat length form Lloyd's transom, and the J24 passed in between. I Gybed and went below the J/24 and managed to gain some speed while Lloyd was blanketed by the 24. We were just able to squeak across the line before Lloyd.
So we got second. Andy was first and is the new Regional Champion!
regards,
Bob