San Diego NOOD - Channing Hamlet

With the worlds conflict ... five local boats made it out to sail the San Diego NOOD regatta this year. Congrats to Keith Davids for a string of bullets and to Gary for a strong showing to take second place.

The two Lindsays in the Fleet (Mine and Fever Pitch) battled for third place and finished the event with one point separating us. Here is what I remember:

Saturday: We had typical South Bay conditions with plenty of blue sky and moderate to light breezes. I was sailing with a very inexperienced crew so I tried to start conservatively and position myself to have conservative boat handling. I do remember having a bit if a duel with Fever on one of the downwind legs and ultimately getting rolled in the hope we could make it up on the next upwind leg.

Sunday: We had unusual San Diego conditions with wind out of the south and I think up to 20 knots or more. While this is unusual for San Diego, it does seem like the NOOD regatta in March typically delivers at least one day with good breeze.

Jake had excellent upwind speed in his older boat. We managed to capsize with the kite up. Somehow I got separated from the boat and the kite stayed airborne ... with the boat drifting away way faster than I could swim. Good times. The kite ultimately collapsed and I got back to the boat to right it and keep going. I've been sailing 505s for about 7 years now and I thought I had seen everything from a capsize standpoint ... apparently not.

Seeing a pretty good rain squall on the horizon a few of us decided to pack it in and skip the second race of the day ... which I think turned out to be a wise (dry) choice. When we saw Fever head in, we knew we had our standing tied up and decided to follow suit ... after-all we live in San Diego and could melt in those conditions.

We shared a course with the I-14 fleet which is always interesting when the breeze is up. It can make for some interesting downwind decisions given the different jibing angles. They were absolutely flying at times downwind.

The race committee and several support boats were able to shoot video and do a replay in the club-house. There was some great video of the Flying Tiger leeward mark roundings (who we also shared the course with) with some very nice wipe-outs. One boat was laid on its side for a couple minutes and managed to get tangled up with the committee boat ... really fun to watch from the comfort of the bar at the end of the day.

Editor's note - All photos are courtesy of Amie Huebner

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