Feelin' the love!

Last night was a perfect night for yacht racing! Sunny skies, temperature in the low 70's, and a crew who is feeling good after coming off of a victorious win at the LeBlance Cup!

With the big boats out of town preparing for the Mac race, it was our turn to score our first bullet in the summer series! With 2 melges 24's in the fleet on a primarily reachy course, we definitely had to play sharp.

Our start was intense! A similarly rated boat in our fleet (Illusion) with an unsimilarly talented crew (yes, they suck) started in a little prestart smack down. You see, Illusion had DG aboard. DG is an awesome professional sailor who I have been working with for the past 10 years. When I say he's good, he's pretty f'ng good. He starts ruthlessly and takes every opportunity to try and make you fuck up. He's that damn good.

But, last night there was lacking on the part of DG... I don't know if cockiness got in the way of his abilities, but everything he threw at us, we successfully evaded.

The Wip was amazing on the helm... In every situation where a dial up or dial down occurred, we were successful in freeing ourselves from their grip. The team was on fire, and after a number of overtly aggressive moves, our team was fired up even more. (Our boat has a number of people I work with as well as Illusion has a number of employees as well from our office).

3..2..1... Milliman counted out as we successful started near the pin on starboard, with clear air above and Illusion pinned to leeward. On the first windward leg, our speed was always better and our point was higher. Gretty and Ben called puffs and shifts, and our hiking was more than we had ever done to try to give Wip the ability to sail as fast as possible.

Knowing that DG was on the other boat, our tacks needed to be stellar, and they were. We rounded 'red eight' first in our fleet, followed by the two Melges, and then Illusion.

Our race yesterday was against the melges... The 24's are very zippy in any condition that they can plane in ... and parts of yesterday allowed them that luxury.

We eased the genoa and set the barber hauler for the reach down to 'yacht club'. Gretty, Vez, and Wip worked the sheets with the puffs, and I joined the crew on the rail for some massive hiking.

We reached the bouy off of yacht club and readied the spinnaker in the forward hatch for hoist...

Rounding YC, we hoisted the red spinnaker in which was the quickest hoist to date... We were determined to win this race, and by the way we had extended on the melges--you could tell we were working harder than anyone.

A nice run with our lightweight runner brought us past the city front twards the mark off Bryant Park. The melges took a higher course than us, hoping to get their speedster on plane... As we rounded the mark at Bryant Park and eased the pole foward for the spinnaker reach to Sand Pit, we noticed they had closed the gap slightly.

On the reach from BP to SP, we finally took a lesson learned from our years of racing Melges's. How to successful fend them off reaching. As the Melges was coming on fast, and slightly higher than us, we headed up to fend them off. At the point where they were about to roll us, we executed a successful aggressive dive to leeward, squaring the pole back in the process. The melges ended up having to gybe for the mark, thus taking our stern... We successfully blocked them.

We rounded Sand Pit for a very short beat to the weather bouy. When I say short... I mean very short. The race was determined on who could get their spinnaker gear around to the other side of the boat, and have a quick clean hoist at WB.

Again, it must have been in the cards, but we had an 'America's Cup' style hoist and jib drop. As we were heading back to SP for the penultimate leg of the course... Illusion crossed our bow--2 full legs behind us... We lapped them!

One final douse and a concentrated beat to the finish at Red Eight ensured our Win.. The team was finally working together, and you could tell that everyone was having a great time.

On the finish, high fives all around, a round of brews, and a lot of loud music took us back to the dock. One of the best sailing nights of the summer!