Hello!

New England in the Fall is one of beautiful places at that time. The leaves start changing color. Cold Fronts bringing big breezes rip through. And, there is a lot of racing!

Two weekends ago, I had my initiation into keelboat team racing. The Lee Trophy, sailed in Sonars and hosted by Seawanhaka YC, brought together many of the top team racers across several generations. The fact that the racing is done in sonars takes away the advantage of being young (often seen in the V15!). We had to be extremely accurate with our positioning and our time on distance. There are a couple of boat-handling tricks, especially with spinnakers, but I felt the playing field was very even from newbie to veteran. I represented Yale Corinthian YC, with Zachary Leonard (Yale Sailing head coach), and Ben Fields (UK) as the other helms. Crewing for us, we had several generations of Yale sailors and Olympian Debbie Capozzi. For many of the crew, it was also their first time in a Sonar. They did a great job learning the spinnaker handling and getting the hang of the boats.  Saturday was a great day of sailing with 10-20 Knots of wind. We got better as the day went on. Unfortunately, Sunday brought rain and no wind. Scores were based on the first round robin. We finished 4^th place of 8 teams, but we were only one win away from first place. Read the rest of this entry →