Miami Race Week: Baby Steps

(Jim Madden recently launched his new 66-foot canting keel Reichel/Pugh design named "Stark Raving Mad," and will be submitting reports from their first regatta: 2006 Acura Miami Race Week. This is Part Four of a five part series.)

Saturday, March 11, 2006: Another mixed day. Took a 3rd in race one today (race 6 of the series) while continuing to take things conservatively. Got the best corrected time out of first - less than two minutes. Still a gap, but progress. Lot’s of time owed to the fleet in our class – anywhere from 9 to 30 minutes, and we typically finish 7 minutes to 45 minutes ahead. Trying also to be friendly to the other 31 boats on our race course (19 Farr 40s, 6 Melges 32s, and 6 Mumm 30s). Sometimes though it’s a little tricky winding our way around them while going offwind at 16-17 knots of boat speed.

We had what is most likely a minor malfunction on one of our electrical switches that controls one hydraulic motor causing us to retire from the rest of racing today so we could see what can be done to race Sunday. Interesting to note, even with our DNF in race 2, our overall at the end of race 5 brought us into third place overall. We are still at the bottom of the learning curve on the boat - today brings us to a total of 5 sailing days since she’s been launched. Robbie Haines tells me that with the MaxZ86 Pyewacket, they had over 20 practice/shake down days before her first race. So maybe we’re pushing things a bit, but we’re looking forward to her potential.

Click here for results.
Photo by Sharon Green/Ultimate Sailing (complete gallery here).
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five