The wind was blowing at about 6 to 8 knots from the East. The first mark was not to windward, as it was SSE, so this turned into a horse race. Marlin was short handed, but we had speed and a fast boat. Skybird was getting bad air from another boat, and could not keep up. Argo had clear air above, and was keeping pace with us. Slowly, however, we pulled away We were getting between Argo and the first mark, with a boat in between us. This boat was faster than we were, but we were in a leeward position, and we able to keep them from passing us. We eventually forced this boat to drop below us. By this time we had a comfortable lead on Argo of about 3 boat lengths.
On approach to the first mark, We called for room at the mark, but the other boat disagreed. We could have pushed ourselves in and probably won at the protest, but I hate protesting, especially outside of my class. We were inside at the mark when the other boat cut us off. In order to avoid a collision, I had to swing far outside of the mark, allowing Argo to slip in inside of us, and Skybird to close to about 1 1/2 boatlengths. The next course was about a beam reach to the next mark.
Argo immediately set her spinnaker, but Skybird and we decided to hold off because it looked like it was too close to carry the spinnaker. Judging by the problems that Argo had, we made the proper decision. Argo ended up losing 8 or 10 boatlengths. Skybird dropped back about 3 boatlengths behind us. At this moment, we were trying to find the next mark. At the end of last year the Severn River was renumbered, and no one was sure which mark was our next mark. We finally found the mark that was well below us. However, Skybird was above us, and Argo was buried in the fleet, so we decided to drive into a clear lane of air before setting the chute. We did this and the fleet started to close together.
As we moved toward the next mark, we had larger boats chopping up our air. Skybird was below us, and Argo was well below them. At this point, we were trying to worry about our shorthanded spinnaker work. We are very good with our spinnaker work, but this was moderate air and this was the first race for one of our three crew. As we came to the mark, Skybird had managed to gain an overlap. We were able to pull out ahead of Skybird so that her overlap didn't matter. We gybed, but the gybe was slow due to mechanical problems. We lost our window to go and get clear air. All we could do was keep Skybird contained.
Before the mark, Argo had driven through the fleet to clear air. She managed to gain back some that she had lost at the first mark. The bigger gainer was Phantom, #113. She managed to pull within about 2 boatlengths of Argo. When these two boats made the second mark and turned toward the harbor, both of them went high into clear air.
About halfway along this leg, an expected shift toward the north occurred, and left those of us in the center with no air for a couple of minutes as a hole opened up. Argo and Phantom were on the far side of the hole and stayed in the air and passed both Skybird and us.
At the next mark, the order was now Argo, Phantom, then after about 4 or 5 boatlengths, us and Skybird. We rounded the mark and headed up toward the docks to keep from being run over and blanketed by larger boats. We gained about 2 boatlengths on Phantom and Argo. The air was fluky inside. We were slowly gaining on the leaders. Argo was out of reach, but we were now about one boatlength behind Phantom when our air gave out. When we got breeze back, Argo had finished, and Phantom was about to cross. We finished about 10 seconds later. Skybird had gotten run over and was stuck in traffic. She lost about 3 boatlengths on us and finished about 20 seconds later.
The order of finish was Argo, Phantom, Marlin, and Skybird. I do not know the order of the other four finishers, because I was stuck in the chaos of the post finish boats.