This was a beautiful day in the Annapolis area. The wind was blowing steadily from the south at about 8 to 10 knots. The line was in its typical north-south alignment with the committee boat at the southern end. The first mark was to the east-southeast. This meant that the committee boat was highly favored. This also meant that everyone would start at the committee boat. This was evidenced by the other starts. On Wednesday nights, there are usually two or three classes starting at each start. At our start this means that there are up to thirty different boats starting.

    Tonight the bottom was very dirty and took a long time to clean. We had been out on Monday in lots of air, and I checked the tune of the rig. It was off. I spent an hour retuning the rig before the race. I think it helped.

    Tonight we realized that the first leg should be a one tack leg, providing that one started at the committee boat and kept working up when it could. This was the most important part of this race. After the start it would be a horse race. Whoever leads this parade will have a huge advantage. During our strategy session, the race committee, for some unknown reason, postponed the start sequence. This is always bad for the later classes because you have to readjust your timing so that you start at the right time. This adds another complexity to the start.

    At less than ten minutes before our start, we went exploring to find a range so that we knew what our close hauled course to the committee boat was. We determined this, and then got in our sequence. Most of the starters with the fleet approached the line very early. It was difficult, but we bided our time and came in with speed. The was a knot of boats right at the committee boat. Some were barging, some had arrived too early, and were heading down the line.

    As we came into the line, we had to worry about those who were directly ahead of us who were going slowly. An overtaking boat must keep clear of the boat ahead. All of a sudden this resolved itself. As we approached the line, the boats ahead of us, worried about being over early, started falling off. As soon as they did this we went from being the overtaking boat to being the leeward boat. This gave us rights over them. We started pushing them back up and this completely stopped half the fleet from starting. One J22 fell off in front of us, and I came up and blew over top of him. . .if I hadn't, I would have cut him in half. I thought this was probably the smarter move. He was able to come up underneath of us and forced us up into the boats above us. I came up and pushed those boats that were on our hip up to head to wind. This meant that they stopped, and we slid out from underneath of them. The J22 slid out from beneath us. This let us fall off and pick up speed, leaving the fleet behind us in our wake.

    Half way up the first leg, we were the only Alberg making the mark. The only boat from our start in front of us was the J22. This was exactly our plan. The rest of the race was fairly uneventful. We had two spinnaker mistakes on the second leg, but we had such a commanding lead by that time that this was insignificant. The trip in through the harbor was executed essentially according to plan.

    As we were coming up to the harbor, we realized that the wind was funneling out of the harbor with a lot of speed in a narrow band by the Naval Academy seawall. Only one Alberg followed us over to the seawall. This gains us some of what we lost on the spinnaker leg.

    We finished about 5 minutes in front of second place. This was a close finish with 244 just beating our 550.  113 finished soon after with 247 just behind. 197 and 484 rounded out the fleet. This was an unusual race for us. We have finally been able to get our act together and put together and follow a plan for a race. The results show for themselves.