By Jack Joslin
We left San Diego headed for Miami on Christmas Night with a plane full of San Diego sailors and parents all headed to Orange Bowl on the red-eye. Leaving the cold of San Diego, it even hailed on the ride to the airport, to join the warm and breezy conditions in Miami, lows in the mid 70's and highs in the 80’s all week.
The Orange Bowl Regatta is unique with over 500 boats across all the fleets - Opti’s, Laser (Full, Radial & 4.7) and our class of 82 - C420 competitors. The C420’s sailed out of the Shake-A-Leg Miami facility just up the street from Coral Reef Yacht Club, the host Club for Orange Bowl. We had excellent coaching for the C420 group, which included 3 teams from SDYC, provided by CISA, with Briana Provancha and Scott Sinks delivering great insight on the venue, wind conditions, boat handling techniques and encouragement on the water between races.
Upon arriving, Jack Reiter and I caught some sleep we missed on the plane and then checked in. We went to rig our boat and make sure we were well prepared for the start of racing on Sunday. Our practice time on the water Saturday was excellent - good breezes ranging from 15-20 knots and warm weather made for great conditions to become more familiar with Biscayne Bay. Over the last few years, I had the fortune of sailing in Biscayne Bay a few times in both Opti’s and 29er’s and I love sailing there.
Sunday, day one of the regatta, started out well with another day of good breeze. We felt comfortable very quickly with a 6th in the first race, 4th in the second race and a 1st in the third, we came in very happy only to learn we were unknowingly called over early in the first race - we had spent our first “throw out race” on day one, but all would work out well. The 1st gave us good confidence going into the next day. Over the middle two days of the regatta we sailed well with all Top Ten finishes, except for one race which was an 11th.
There were 12 races scheduled and the final day left us with only two races to finish. Good conditions again prevailed, with breezes at a minimum of 10 knots each day of racing. We started off well finishing 2nd in the first race of the day, only to struggle a bit in the last - bookending the regatta with our 2 throw-outs in the first and last race over the four days of racing.
We finished 8th overall out of 82 boats, just a few points shy of being in the top five - we are very proud of our performance.
Thanks so much to the SDYC Competition Fund and all its contributors for supporting our trip to Miami for the Orange Bowl. We knew that SDYC over the years has had a long-standing tradition of top performances at this regatta in the C420 Class and we are proud to have been a part of representing Team SDYC well this year.