Last weekend I travelled to Newport Beach, California to sail with my buddy Paul Cayard in the 2009 Star Class District 5 Championships. I flew in Friday afternoon, while Paul completed the Coastal Cup race from San Francisco to Long Beach.

I set the boat up and managed to get everything ready for his early Saturday arrival. The day started out with no sunshine and rain! Not very Southern Californian, we almost had to make an executive decision and stay in the bar all day due to the lack of sunshine.

Joking aside, we headed out of the Newport Harbor Yacht Club on a tow that lasted for roughly 10 miles at 1015. We arrived on the race course around 1130 got the sails up, had a look at the rig, checked the numbers and had a look at the race course.
Situation normal in Newport Beach – light, lumpy looked like it was going to be a massive day of hiking to leeward…

We completed 4 races and managed to stay near the top of the fleet all day long, by the end of racing on Saturday 3 points separated the top 3 boats. Close action!

Saturday night NHYC held a great party where Rick Peters organized for a band that he had been raving about for days leading up to the event! They lived up to Rick’s billing, “Human Lab” rocked.

It was great seeing old friends, man I must be getting old because their kids are growing up fast!

Sunday was more Southern Californian, sunny and the hint of a day with breeze. The conditions were fantastic, 12 knots a few nice waves to surf downwind and sunshine! Paul and I had a great day winning all three races and only being crossed once the entire day! But… we later learned that the R/C deployed a leeward gate in the 6th race? Go figure in the previous five races there was no leeward gate and in the 6th race of the series they implemented a gate? To make matters worse they set it to the left of the original mark, it would of made some sense to put the new mark to the right (looking downwind) it would have been a bit more clear. And to top things off the mark was attached to a line that was way too long and the mark had drifted downwind about 100 yards… well 90% of the fleet followed us and a few folks went around the “gate”.

Four days later and I still swear I never saw a leeward gate. I guess I need to wake up a bit because as the crew it’s one of my jobs to locate the marks. I was a bit off the pace with this aspect of my job. Thankfully, Paul had seven of the best starts possible to give us a chance! The good news is even with a DSQ in race 6 we still won the regatta!

So what’s next? My firm Delta Investment Management is hosting a lunch at the Gulfport Yacht Club Friday, July 10th, so my focus is now on making this the best lunch in the history of Delta!

Good times

Austin