SSA 505 Summer Series Day 1, Saturday June 9th: Erika CRUSHES the 505 Fleet

[Alexander Meller]

The Solings called it a spring series, we called it a summer series.  In theory summer starts in a few days, and it is still spring, but who cares about that.

 

What we do care about is that we had an epic (multiple people used this word) day of 505 sailing on the Bay, getting in four races.  I estimate that breeze was 10-17 knots, but who knows or really cares, as long as you get to plane upwind and down, at least some of the time.

 

PRO Jesse Falsone (WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN SAILING BUT HAD TO SWITCH RC DAYS DUE TO SOME POORLY CONSIDERED KIDS BASEBALL GAME COMMITMENTS) ran the Solings and 505s close to the shore next to Greenbury Point, not far past the spider buoy (BTW, does anyone know why we call a platform that is the remnants of a screw pile lighthouse a buoy?)

 

While I might normally give a tack by tack, blow by blow description of the racing, I was too busy crewing to keep it all straight in my mind (and the lack of oxygen while nearly drowning <this is a joke> during a capsize may have affected my memory.  We started with three teams, Erika/???, ???/Brendan and Amie/J, but Sterg/Mike eventually made it out after Sterg completed enough reengineering on 7199 to race the boat.  The major change was the addition of an offset bow launcher; 7199 used to be a bag boat.

 

Erika Seamon won three of the four races, capsizing in race 3 while in first, but holding on to second in that race.  The other teams split seconds and thirds, with ???/Brendan winning the race that Erika did not. Sterg/Mike were looking good in one race but managed to sail over the guys, sheets or kite; perhaps offset launcher forward tack boats don't work QUITE the same way a forward tack boat does.

 

Post racing the fleet enjoyed the snack bar drinks (including Dark & Stormy) and food, while discussing plans for the NAs at SSA in October.

 

Results will be up on the web, linked to from the SSA calendar at http://www.severnsailing.org/results/index.shtml , soon.

 

The next 505 Summer Series day is July 14th (again with the Solings).

 

Next weekend is Rockhall (Summer One Design) and Falmouth.

--
Alexander "Ali" Meller
505 sailing/racing
Bicycle racing