Winter World Cup Practice Week

Just got back from a wonderful week in the other Newport (Newport Beach CA) sailing with Hank and Toby aboard Saint Fransis V, Hanks wooden modern 6 Metre (pictured at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club). Toby was heading out to visit the in-laws for New Years and was kind enough to fly me out, and Hank was generous with housing and his boat and time for the week of practice sailing in prep for next September's World Championships in Newport, RI.

We flew out Tuesday morning and finished a long day with a few hours sailing tour of Newport Harbor. Wednesday saw light wind with Fog rolling in and out so again we stayed in the bay, but had a nice training session allowing Toby to get some upwind and tacking practice. Thursday Hank and I drove down to San Diego to sail on a classic 10 metre with a great family. The fleet was probably 150 strong with our class ranging from Stars & Stripes '92 at PHRF -111 to us and the Flying Tigers at +48. It was a beautiful sunny day with good breeze building through the afternoon. Friday we were back to afternoon practice in Newport and the breeze came up enough for us to head out into the ocean, but then shut started to shut off with us about 3 miles off the beach. It was a slow spinnaker run back, but we got in before it got too dark or cold.

Saturday was a more stead breeze and little warmer with mostly sunny skies and again we got offshore for some good practice, then Sunday was race 3 of the Sunkissed Series (first Sunday of each month in the winter) where we were joined by Greg Stewart (NA/ME from Nelson/Marek)who owns 6m Sprig and is coming east for the World Cup and another of Hank's local friends. We unfortunately chose the wrong side of the coarse, but it was a beautiful sunny day with about 12 kts of wind, so we didn't care. After dinner I caught the red-eye back home in time to take a quick nap, shower, shave and head to work. Exhausting finish, but an AWESOME day and a great week.