(Xiamen, China)- There was light air this weekend, but no lack of
turnout again for the second week of racing. With 8 boats on the water
and over 50 people attending to help with committee or sail, things have
been going very well. Since the overall participants in many cases
have not sailed J/80's before, the first two weeks of light air have
allowed teams to start to figure out the best ways of handling the
asymmetrical spinnaker sets, jibes and take downs.
We had two races and tried to get a third but lack of wind lead to
abandoning the last race. Boat #6 driven by Jacky Chen showed
consistent first place finishes to win the day. I must say that it is
great to see so many kids joining the sailing. Last week we had Laura
and Phil Harvey with 4 small kids on board and this week we had Alain
and Sacha Vermeulen and Pieter van der Plas sailing with their kids.
You will notice from the photo that the kids are driving when they got
2nd in the first race.
I
am glad to see that everyone is having a great time. We have changed
the schedule a little to help with the holiday travel schedule. We will
be racing Dec. 19th, Jan. 9th, Jan 16th, Jan. 23rd and finishing on
Jan. 30th. We are keeping track of the overall score but it is good for
people to realize that this is just for fun and that we are all out
just bettering out sailing ability. I look forward to seeing everyone
this weekend, We will be trying to get the first start off at 1:30pm
sharp if we have breeze this weekend so don't get too far from the
starting area.
