News 2011 Heavy Weather Laser Slalom

T

Tracy Usher

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The 2011 Heavy Weather Laser Slalom starts today with racing in front of the St Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco! This is shaping up to be a big event, headlined by Anna Tunnicliffe but with a deep field of highly qualified sailors. Check out some of the leadup on the SailBlast blogsite. And you can follow the racing action live on the St Francis Yacht Club's webcam! Finally, watch for video updates at the end of each day's racing...

View article on Laser.org
 
Thanks Tracy!

12 noon (local time): ~7 mph...

Hoping for (much) more before the day is over.
 
The racing is about to start, it looks like. Two boats circling around, but it doesn't seem (very) windy.

The webcam from the yacht club is worth exploring...
 
A few races have been run and the wind continues to build; some white caps.
2 PM (local time): 18 mph gusting to 24

:eek: A few capsizes by now :eek:

but I won't disclose any names. Actually, the sailors are too far away to tell from the web cam images.
 
4 PM (local time): 18 mph gusting to 28
I guess that's typical for SF Bay this time of the year, now that the fog has cleared up.
 
After day 1
Colin Dibb, Ben Richardson, Anna Tunnicliffe, Scott Ferguson, Michael Matan, Tracy Usher, Al Clark, and Peter Shope made it to the quarter finals.
 
Wow! What an event! Today was fantastic. In the end it was a District 7 sweep with Peter Shope beating Ben Richardson in two final races (Ben flamed in both on massive puffs when he had to pull of jibes) and with Scott Ferguson in third. Scott had Peter put away when he went into a massive death roll that launched him from his boat, in the end leaving him some 3 boat lengths away! Its all been captured on video, I'm looking forward to getting to see it!

I'll see if I can get some updates tomorrow.

Master Worlds start tomorrow with measurement, practice race on Saturday, real racing on Sunday. Watch for news on that too!
 
PS It was amazing to have Anna Tunnicliffe as a competitor in this event. In 25 knots sailing a Standard rig her boat handling was near flawless in spite of not having been in a Laser in a long time and spotting the rest of us some 30-40 pounds (or, in my case, some much larger, but unspecified, amount).
 

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