Star Bacardi Cup: Day One

2005 Star North American champ and Quantum Sails rep George Szabo will be filing reports on Scuttleblog this week from the Bacardi Cup in Miami, FL

(Sunday, March 5) 93 Star boats made it to the water for Day One of the Bacardi Cup. Warm water and warm air made the sailing comfortable. Perfect conditions really, except for the very shifty winds.

On the way to the racecourse, coaching wisdom said to protect the left, but stay away from the clouds. That sounded easy enough, but was a bit difficult in practice. While racing, we found plenty of clouds, and the left breeze filling in strong from the causeway, but as it died and shifted right 20 degrees, many skippers were mistakenly led to believe that it was the end of the left, and the right was coming in with the seabreeeze. Rick Peters (crewing for Rick Merriman) said he was convinced that the seabreeze was going to fill and gave it a try, but lost distance on the leaders.

Flying in on the red eye from California, Mark Reynolds did a good job protecting the left to win the race. His housing host, Carmen Diaz, wants to make sure that he doesn't sleep tonight so that he can repeat the same performance on Monday. Mark's crew, Christian Finnsgard, Star World champion crew from Sweden, was very happy with the win, but is fighting a losing battle on his sunburn. Christian just came from 30 inches of snow back home, and missed a few spots with the sunscreen. Ouch.

My crew, Eric Monroe, and I are sailing a new boat to us this week, having just sold 7995. Changing boats after sailing your previous boat for 4 years makes it a bit more difficult to find the gears. We also spent too much time on the right side of the course, and found our way to the middle of the pack, having then to play catch up for the remainder of the day. Fortunately, on the last beat, we finally caught up with the boat that we just sold!

6-10 knots and shifting right forecast for Monday. - George Szabo

Day One - Day Two - Day Three - Day Four - Day Five - Day Six

Photo credits: Jan Walker (above) and Alex Gort (below)

Race One winners Mark Reynolds and Christian Finnsgard