Day one of Big Boat Series

September 15, 2005

It's been 8 years since the first CBTF boat sailed in the St. Francis YC Big Boat Series. That was the Shock 40 prototype, Red Hornet which I skippered on the bay. Now, I'm back on a much bigger CBTF boat, Morning Glory.. Hasso Plattner's 85 foot Reichel Pugh powerhouse. We're sailing in a class of nine boats, but there really is only one other direct competitor... that's Randall Pittman's 90 foot Dubois designed CBTF rocketship - "Genuine Risk".

Today was our first day of racing and unfortunately for the spectators, the wind was uncharacteristically light.. it never got above 14 knots until the end of the afternoon. But the racing was still incredibly close and exciting between the two CBTF maxi's Genuine Risk led around the first mark of the first race after passing us on the first beat, but we passed her again on the downwind run and held on for a 45 second victory. (We owed Genuine Risk about 18 seconds in that race). Then in the second race, we led wire to wire, but things were really close at the second leeward mark with the boat's overlapped. But Genuine Risk held their spinnaker too long and it went back overboard into the water as they passed the mark. After turning down and recovering the sail, we had a comfortable lead that we held to the finish. Still the hallmark of the day was the really close racing. The boats were rarely more than 30 seconds apart on both races.

Hopefully more breeze tomorrow.

Peter Isler
Navigator,
Morning Glory

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Morning Glory

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