Goals

Our goals have now changed. Initially this blog was created to allow people to follow us in our progression leading to the 2007 Worlds in Santa Cruz, now that we have raced that regatta, we need a new goal. Our new goal is simple. To ascend the Melges 24 circuit as quickly as possible. Our plan to do this is to continue to practice and to race as many one-design events as possible. To do this we will need continued support from our friends and family. All of you that have helped out with logistics on our journey to worlds, Karma Racing thanks you. We couldn't of done it without all of you.

We will be in Long Beach at Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week June 22-24. Practice starts this Sunday in San Diego.

Photos posted from the first CRA Beer Can #1. Thanks Da-Woody.

Dumb Dumb Dumb

Okay -
So we had a great time Wednesday night, as I pointed out earlier, but due to me not really paying attention to the scratch sheet I thought we owed the J-109 time, when in reality we don't. So on the last leg to the finish we split from an easy cover on the 109 to try and gain some more time, and ended up losing time and having to duck on the next cross. Looking at the results, that cost us second place and two boats (we lost the Beneteau 10R also). Bummer. Photos will be posted courtesy of Da-Woody soon. Great times, and we have a shot of doing well in our class, hopefully work doesn't interfere too much and we are able to race enough races to give this series a shot.

CRA Beer Cans #1

We did a nice beer can race last night. Christine Pai joined us for the first time. Christine is a dinghy sailor at UCSD, and fit right in with the crew. Other crew included Warren Gross, Adam Storey, Theresa Roland, and me. We did some swapping of positions, and had a great time overall. We were a little bound up at the start due to a J-105 holding us up, but once we got clear we were doing okay. We should have played the east side of the bay on the downwind, and we let the J-109s stay in touch. One of them decided to go shrimping at the leeward mark, but we were unable to shake Geronimo, and our flier to try to gain some time didn't pay. I think we probably corrected out in 3rd or 4th if my calculations are correct. Results should be posted soon and I will include a link. Congrats to John Downing on the other melges that got a clean start and dusted the fleet.

Post Worlds Debrief

First off I want to apologize to everyone for not posting during the two weeks we were in Santa Cruz. The time spent on the water and getting the boat ready consumed too much time, and the lack of internet connection at the condo we rented did not all allow me to easily access the internet to send updates. I got swamped at work today, but tomorrow I am going to try and post photos and a summary of what was going on. Sorry to keep you waiting.

In Santa Cruz

We are in Santa Cruz now. We are parked up right next to the Pegasus guys. They are being very friendly and are quick to offer advice.
Yesterday was dedicated to getting the boat ready. We spent all day polishing, rigging, cleaning, etc. Karma hasn't looked this good in a while. The only problem is I am updating the blog from my phone, so I can't post any pics till they set up the wireless internet at SCYC.
We go for our first sail here in a few hours. Let the practice for worlds begin.

PCC's

We participated in the Megles 24 PCC's this past weekend. It was by far the most fun I have had while sailing in a long time. The entire weekend we improved our crew work and continued to learn how to make this boat work. Unfortunately, our results don't really show that. Our first day we did a great job playing the shifts, but our starts were atrocious. The second day the wind really picked up, we had much better starts, but we were figuring out how to sail the boat downwind properly. We were spending so much time just working on boat speed we kind of let tactics slip to a secondary role and we lost a lot of boats upwind that were slower than us but played the shifts better.

Although we didn't place well, we are quickly learning the boat. With another solid week of practice in Santa Cruz we will hopefully be able to give a better performance at worlds. Photos of day 1 can be found here. Day 2 here.

This weekend has served to reinforce my feelings that the melges 24 class is the epitomy of one-design keel boat racing. Everyone is very friendly, quick to lend advice, and always provides encouragement. Here is a link to the photos of Karma on Day 2 that I sorted out.