Last Day (Friday): One and Done

Friday morning we'd finished up all our eggs and bacon (which Adam cooked two mornings: thank you Adam!), so we all went to breakfast again. This time we went to Toms River Diner, which had some kind of weird architecture, though I had a delicious omelette (spinach and feta, in case you're curious).

Ben, Ryan and Adam at Toms River Diner

With a maximum total of five races allowed for the NAC, Friday we had a single race. The race committee made it six legs, though, so we felt like we got our money's worth! Like on Thursday,   the wind was essentially from the east, though it seemed a little steadier this day. Once again, Ben and I mixed it up with most of the sailors in the fleet. We were in front of Ryan and Adam at one point, and we pointed as well as Harry Carpenter, but we once again hit mud at one point and since we failed to cover anyone we lost almost everyone! That's one thing we learned: in a fleet as tough as this, you can't relax once you've passed someone because they'll come right back and pass you. Still, we rounded the last upwind mark just behind Chris Morgan in FS 842.  These guys are always tough competitors and they were in trophy contention, so we dug in and were determined to catch them. As we rounded the mark and pulled down our jib they looked over their shoulders at us and then kept sailing. We concentrated on milking every ounce of wind out of our spinnaker. About halfway down the leg they looked over and took their jib down. We had them worried! The wind died, it came back, it died again. I never took my eyes off the spinnaker and I kept feeding it as much as I could, constantly. I like to think all that concentration and hard work paid off since we passed them at the finish, but you never know! They still trophied, but we had our small victory!!

Once again, Frank and Marianne had a great day, with another first place with a commanding lead. They were able to pull out a second place finish overall. Yay!!

After we packed up and applauded the trophy winners we hit the road to visit my dad and his wife in Bethesda, Md, for a few days. Next up? Ephraim, this weekend. Hope to see you all there!!