Brilliant Racing Wednesday June 10 2026

The wind this week was up and down and shifty by 10 – 15 degrees and we were missing one of our key crew members and slightly short-handed. Before the start we were seeing 12+ knots, but in the 5 minutes before the start it had drops to 6 or 7. I planned a well timed start but for the wrong gun. I was a minute early and we needed to waste some time. In the last 10 seconds or so we were running along the line and we all believed we were below the line. At the gun we were called OCS and had to return. RC later clarified that we were OCS the entire time we were running the line. After we painfully slowly returned to the line the wind eventually picked up again. Much of the fleet tacked over to the middle of the bay but some of the most experience boats stayed left. We went left but not as hard as some of the boats. Approaching the weather mark we were surprised that some of the boats that were usually behind us at this point were in front and vice versa. The spinnaker set was a little slow to fill. We made a point here to stay back in the middle of the course. The first jibe was pretty clean but a reminder here to get a hold of the old sheet before the jibe begins. I try to maneuver the boat to swing the kite closer to you but that’s not always optimal. Perhaps routinely putting the twing on before the jibe will help – like the jibe at about 13 minutes or a manual support like at 19 minutes. The leeward mark rounding was clean and we managed to work above the boat rounding ahead. He finally tacked away. We rode that line pretty far to the right but not as far as Pied Piper. In retrospect it might have been a bit light in the corner as well so happy we didn’t go all the way. We were a little overstood (the wind had gone right a bit) but we used that for speed. A nice hoist at the mark but we should have had two people on it to control the guy and get the sheet in faster. We stayed in the middle of the course with several jibes to stay in the breeze. In the end we managed a 3rd even with the OCS one minute behind first place which is less than we lost returning to the start.