Alexanderson Cup: 2009

Alexanderson Cup

Sep 19, 2009      Wind Conditions: Light

Committee Boat was done by Zandy Gabriel and LGC's CBLs. Thank you for getting all 15 boats checked-in and started (catching that over-early boat). An extra step was starting a stopwatch to keep track of our elasped times (ET) so I could calculate the 7 different varieties of boats' Corrected Time for the after-race gathering back at the Lake George Club. The RC set out the marks and guessed that windward was going to hold east, even though the forecast predicted NW. And time enough for a W2 course, with a downwind finish that favors the J/22s, (seeing that it is Rik's regatta I couldn't argue), so that's what we did! It was a short, but respectable starting line and a decent windward leg, noted by the number of tacks and shifts to get to the mark, and by the looks of the Star downwind with its huge main straight out, the way to go was straight down the rhumb line to the mark. We all know things changed a whole lot the next time around, but it was still a challenging course for all of us. It was great fun crewing for Dougall on Vaporize as we flew upwind holding even with the Star to the first mark. Windshifts taken advantage of traded the lead with Psycho who eventually rounded first. Once I got the asymetrical out after rounding the mark we rolled the Star and went as fast as we could knowing we had a lot of time to put in between us and the fleet. Straight down, which favored Gardner and son in Psycho, was their best course so they again took back the lead at the leeward mark. Not sure what was going on behind us as we headed back upwind. A lot of verbal exchanges as I looked back to see the J/22s and J/24s all bunched together trying to find a hint of breeze to separate them at the leeward mark. At this point I was very happy to not be sailing Spirit not having to deal with that. As you can see by the results, the Viper finished 1st and then Star, but then it was the J/22s who finished in the next 6 out of 7 spots with Nate Dickinson's O-Day 27 taking 8th place on corrected time.No prize for second place, so Ed and Eddie Gardner in Psycho earned the coveted Alexanderson trophy, by 10 seconds CT!