The Knickerbocker Cup was cut short due to Hurricane Irene, but we did manage to get in two full days of racing. The event was sailed in Swedish Match 40’s and required 5 people, so we added one of our USSTAG teammate’s Trevor Moore as trimmer and Tom Loughbrough as bow.
We started out day one with a bang. We raced the number one seed, Laurie Jury in race one. We were leading him up the first leg and then got a penalty for tacking too close. We maintained our lead and held him past the windward mark. At one point we thought we could take our penalty, but were mistaken and hit his stern in the process. We got rid of our initial penalty but gained another one. We set our spinnaker and were charging towards him. He did not set his spinnaker due to damage. Once we caught up to him we were given another penalty, so we had to take one penalty immediately. After that he was able to beat us to the finish. We ended up 4-1 on day one.
Day two was delayed due to light breeze. Once we finally got racing we only had time for three races. We went 2-1 for the day. The most exciting race was our final race against Reuben Corbett. He led us off the line but we were able to round the first mark right behind him. We gained on the downwind and rounded opposite gates. We played the left side and gained. He dialed us down near the top of the course and we tacked underneath. We luffed him up and dropped our jib to be able to stay head to wind longer and have more glide forward. We pulled the jib back up and sailed for a little while longer. We got our bow advanced but we were over the layline, so we dropped our jib again. We had a few jib up and jib down situations. Finally, when we were well past the windward mark we tried to get him slow and then we bore away and gybe set. He was ahead initially and gybed over and luffed us. We were able to gybe out and rolled him on port. He gybed out and took a while to fill his spinnaker. We gybed at him on starboard and when he gybed to avoid us we ended up avoiding him. He got a penalty and we were able to hold him a little longer and then gybe to the finish.
Even though the racing was cut short we were able to get in some great races. We ended up 2nd at the event, which was pretty exciting since we had never sailed as a team before. We would like to thank Tom and Trevor for joining us, as well as the US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics, all of our generous sponsors, and donors.
