So we didn't have much wind at all today. Postponed on shore for 3 hours and then it filled in from the South. When they lower the postponement flag on shore you have 30 minutes until the race starts on the water, a fact we kind of forgot. We ended up missing our start by about two minutes with two of the other boats, which was just dumb on our part. The wind was similar to yesterday afternoon so we headed out right and rounded the windward mark in 6th. There was better pressure on the right but for some reason all the boats ahead of us were heading down the left side of the course. We gybed over and ended up catching right up to the 4th and 5th place boats at the leeward mark. We gained again on the second downwind, and noticed coming into the leeward mark that the wind had shifted left. We played middle left on the third beat and came out dead even with the 5th place boat, which lee-bowed us but then plowed right into a large kelp bulb, allowing us to stay in clear air. The wind had now died almost to nothing and the last downwind leg was painfully slow, with us and the 4th and 5th place boats sailing all together. At the bottom of the course a race committee boat was tied off to the leeward gate mark to finish the lasers on a shortened course, and behind this was our finish line. Basically it was a mess of no wind, lots of RC boats and a lot of confusion. The boat directly ahead of us thought they had finished when they passed the gate mark and took down their spinnaker, allowing us to sail past them and across the finish line in 5th. The race committee then cancelled racing for the rest of the day as there was no wind again.
Other than missing our start it was a pretty good race. We managed to focus on our speed and made some excellent tactical decisions which allowed us to gain on the boats around us. Hopefully we will have more wind tomorrow. Results are at http://www.nqr2009.ca/.
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