In February, before the lockdown orders, I had the great opportunity to compete in the C420 Midwinter Championship event in Jensen Beach, Florida. I joined Tyler Wood from Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club for the three day event, after a last minute drop out by the previous skipper. I hopped on a plane less than 24 hours after I was called to replace Tyler’s skipper. I took the red eye out, and was on the water by 9:30 am for our practice day. After an all-day practice, we returned to the hotel, to debrief and work out the rest of the kinks before we headed into qualifying.
We had a solid qualifying day were it blew 15 knots and produced great conditions for a day of sailing. Tyler and I are a large team at 295 lbs. We struggled in the early parts of the day with the lighter breeze but, as the breeze built so did our performance. We had a respectable score line after Day one of qualifying. Day two saw more of the same and we made it into Gold fleet in 10th, overall. We were stokked with this performance, having never sailed together before the practice day. After a restful night, we took on Day three, the first day of division sailing. Day 3 saw the most breeze, with the wind sustaining high teens for most of the day. Tyler and I found our groove. We had 4 great races to advance ourselves to 7th place, after a great day of sailing. Unfortunately Day 4 was not so great for us. It started with a two hour on land postponement due to lack of breeze and there were rumors of no wind for the entire day. But, the race committee being determined to get racing off, sent us out to the race course, where we proceeded to wait another two hours for the breeze. After a boring wait, the breeze filled in and we rolled into sequence. There were three races planned for the final day, all of which saw light breeze which did not bode well for us. We made it work for the first race but after that we fell down the order.
We managed to hold on enough to make it into the trophy positions earning a 10th place finish. We were content with the results given the circumstances we were dealt. Tyler and I would like to thank the Maritime Sciences and Seamanship Foundation for supporting us at this event, even with such late notice.