St Thomas Int Regatta- Some sympathy from Above on Day 2
by Bob Fisher on 29 Mar 2015
- 2015 St Thomas International Regatta, Day 2 Dean Barnes
So, the powers that control the meteorological conditions at regattas decided, rightfully, that they had achieved near perfection on the opening day, and maybe because that they decided that the behavior at the subsequent party was exemplary, to tweak it and in doing so, made it close to perfect.
They had reduced the top end of the wind range to 20 knots maximum and eliminated the broaching and capsizing.
While there are only two entries in the class for big yachts, their contrast provides their crews with constant place switching. The Barbadian TP 52, Conviction, steered by Clint Brooks, is considerably faster upwind than the 40ft New England boat, Spookie of Steve and Heidi Benjamin, but performances are reversed downwind. Close study of this relativity is fascinating and today’s courses around the islands and laid marks were testing. On each of the races, this time with windward starts, the TP 52 shot ahead, but on the other legs Spookie narrowed the gap.
In both of today’s races, the outcome was close. Spookie finished 4mins 47 seconds astern of Conviction on the shorter course of the morning, but corrected out 26 seconds ahead. In the afternoon, on a longer course, Conviction led all the way round but on one of the reaches, Spookie was able to carry an A-sail that wasn’t in the TP 52’s wardrobe and the gain by the smaller boat was critical in the overall result, and while the bigger boat had stretched away to lead by seven and a half minutes and that gave the smaller boat the corrected time win by twent six seconds.
Frenetic would be the best description of the race organization on the IC 24 class course – they had five races – the first four were double windward/leewards and the last was a short distance race. Marco Teixidor’s Cachondo with a 2,2,7,4,3 moved into joint first on points after eight races with Ramon Gonzelez’ Sembrador, who today posted 1.1.7,4,3. Fernando Inzarry’s Porto 7 completes a 1,2,3 for Porto Rico.
In the Beach Cats, Annie Gardner, sailing a Nacra 17 with her husband, Eric Tirre has made a clean sweep in all seven races. Paul Stokes, with a Hobie 16 is next best in this class.
One of the stately sights is the SC 70, Hotel California, the Bill Lee design slipping effortlessly through the waves in the non-spinnaker class. She leads with two firsts and a second from Jeremi Jablonski’s Hanse 430e, Avant.
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