On March 12-13, 2011 Jake Reynolds, Jake La Dow, Austin Dias and I [Nevin Snow] set to do the best we could and to learn as much as we could at the California Dreamin’ Series – San Diego stop. It was the first match racing event we had done since going to Italy, and we weren’t expecting anything too amazing; more of just a warm-up for the big events we are planning on doing this summer.
Saturday started off with perfect breeze, a light 8-10 knots from the southwest, perfect for some match racing. Once the first race was over and we had won, we knew we had what it took to do very well in this event, and really wanted to push hard to make SDYC look good at home. The first few races were against easier competitors, and it was soon clear that there were three main players: Shaun Bennet, Dustin Durant, and ourselves. Those two sailors were our last two competitors of the round robin, and when we faced Shaun on the last race of Saturday, we kept calm and used our speed and boat-handling advantage to pull out a win.
We were one of two boats who were still undefeated after the first day, and we only had to race Durant before the semis. The next day was a little trickier and when we went to race Durant (who at this point had picked up another loss) we found ourselves having to work harder than ever to stay in control pre-start because of the large shifts in the breeze. We squeaked out a win, and went on to the semis as the number one ranked team. We beat John Horsche in two races, and the final was set up for Shaun Bennet vs Team SDYC.
The first race went back and forth, nonstop, but he had a penalty. Suddenly he made a move at us and cancelled out his penalty. He was far ahead now, but we roped him back in with our superior boat-handling once again. We passed him on the final upwind to take the first race. On the second race, we pushed him over the line, and made it so difficult for him to clear himself, that when he finally did, we were 15 boat lengths ahead, and had won the regatta
It was a great win with a long road ahead for the year, and we would like to thank the Competition Syndicate Fund for all of your support.