From Alec Cutler at the M-24 Worlds. Reality is a cold mf’er, brother…
Let’s get the “never like this here” out of the way. Winds today from the EAST! On Berkeley Circle. Today better resembled offshore in Annapolis or Long Island Sound than San Fran. Oh, but those other places don’t have Napa Valley brush fire smoke on the course.
Today featured 3 races of 4-14 kts, shifting from 030 to 060 with irregularity, and big holes. The usual rule of thumb is that the start determines 80% of the race outcome. Today, it was the last 200 meters on the first beat. Melgi in 10 kts and flat water all go the same speed. After 1.5 miles, the top boats + 20 more all converged on the windward mark the same time. It made for some crazy random number generation in each race. That said, the cream really does rise to the top, and the best teams of this event found a way and fought their way to the front more often than not. You can see the scores for yourself. All I can say is that top finishes today were hard earned….
As for hedgehog, we had the same opportunities as any other (we seemed to be swapping tacks with Embarr and Full Throttle at the tops of each first leg, but connected the final few dots quite poorly and got seriously hammered for it. The hogs are not happy campers. We sailed ourselves out of contention, so tomorrow we race for pride, and are comforted by the knowledge that whomever winds up winning the Worlds will have been fully tested. Results.
