Dear Friend of CHARIAD:

This past week, CHARIAD competed in the ONE Regatta from Marblehead that is the regional championship of offshore racing. We sailed Fri, Sat and Sun in light to moderate winds under sunny skies.

This was by far the best and most competitive racing we have had all season. We finished tied for 3rd on our fleet and they did a tie breaking flip of the coin or whatever and moved us to 4th.

There has been a flurry of emails this week about how the scoring was done because CHARIAD unambiguously finished 3rd using the PHRF handicapping system that is used for all of the other racing we do.

Three boats – CHARIAD, a Frers 36 (Hot Spur) and a J 33 (Sirocco) sailed boat to boat for seven races over the three days. Another boat that we owed a lot of time to under the handicapping system was not close to these three boats during most of the races, but the way the handicap system works is that in very light wind a lot time is added to their finish time and they corrected over CHARIAD by a few seconds in two races to put them in 3rd place.

Rick at CHARIAD helm at New England Championships

In the first race on Friday, we finished 2nd after a terrific effort by everyone on the boat. On Saturday, we seemed flatter with a number of small mistakes. Our scoring at the time gave us two 3rds and a 4th though this was revised to three 4th ‘s with the different scoring system.

On Sunday, we waited a long time for the wind to fill in and there was finally enough to get the race started. This was probably the most exciting race though we were in ghosting conditions at time. When we were 30 yards from the windward mark (beating upwind) the wind came around behind us and we went Wing on Wing the last few yards to the mark. The boat that corrected over us into 3rd overall rounded the mark a few feet in front of us and we snuck between them and the mark because we had a little momentum. We then “took off” downwind with the little momentum we had and crossed the finish line 2nd.

This was a real high for everyone on the boat.

We have a super crew on the boat with a great combination of old timers and newer crew members. Remember this is the first season in three years that CHARIAD has been in the water and racing for the full season.

I wish I had more pictures from the regatta. Will do better next time.

Enjoy the super weekend coming up.

My best,

Rick