Every year, hundreds of boats come to Miami to compete in multiple different classes in the Orange Bowl Youth International Regatta . This year was my third Orange Bowl: I did my first in the 29’er and the other in the C420. Last year Nathan Sih, my crew, and I finished fifth, so this year we were hopeful of a better finish. Nathan and I spent the months leading up to Orange Bowl only racing in high school events and Lasers, so we needed some practice to get used to the 420 again. We started by using the Perry 2 event in Coronado as a training event. The event helped us get in the saddle again, but we were not fully prepared, so we flew out to Miami a few days early to train with the Coral Reef team.
Coral Reef has some of the fastest and smartest 420 sailors in the country. The coaches, Ian and Fred, are weather gurus, and very knowledgeable about the 420 and tactics. The best part was that they were all locals and knew the venue inside out. They could tell you anything you wanted to know about the venue or weather.The training was intense. We would wake up at 6am and get to the boat park by 7am. We would rig our boats and go into a 7:30am weather briefing. We would be on the water by 10am. Once on the water, we would do a variety of different drills. Although Nathan and I had not sailed 420’s in a while, we were fast and wanted to learn everything about weather, tactics and the venue that we could. We would be off the water around 5pm or 6pm, and debrief until 7pm or 8pm. The debriefs were essentially physics lectures. Fred would bring up a theorem and talk about how it applied to the wind on the venue. It was very insightful and interesting. The week was like that, and I felt it prepared us for the event well. We were so excited for the first day of the event. Our practice days were meant to replicate our regatta days so we could get a routine going. Nathan and I woke up and went to bed at the same time, so we were used to getting to the boat park at 7am. We got on the water and were hoping to keep our average at around 6th for the first day. Unfortunately, during the first race, a cloud came with a right shift and we were hard left, so we rounded the mark near dead last. We used our speed to finish 14th. Nathan and I really wanted some better finishes. It was windy and we were fast. The remaining races that first day we got a 5, 3 and a 1st. We were really happy with our first day. However, when we got in, one of my friends informed me that our third was actually an OCS. We were disturbed with this news.
The next day we were still determined that we could grind back if we had a good day. We had a pretty good day. It was windy again. We finished the day with a 6, 8, 1. We were happy because we moved up more than 20 places after the first day. The next day we were planning to keep moving up places but, in the first race, we chased a rain cloud on the right side of the course, and there was no shift and we rounded in last. We were still able to manage a 22. The whole day the conditions were weird and tricky. The chop eliminated all differences in boat speed and the shifts were unpredictable. We got another 14 and an 8. We were not happy at all with our finishes. We would still be able to finish top 10, if we just had two decent races on the final day.
On the last day, we finally saw more normal conditions. There was less chop and less wind so we were happy. We won the first race.. Then, the second race we also won again. The pin was favored in both races and everyone was pushing the line really hard. We did not push the line very hard, which was why we were surprised to find out that we were over again in the first race. We were baffled because there were so many other boats that were further ahead of us on the line and weren’t called over. We decided to file for redress. When we got in, we talked with Danny Hughes, one of two other boats that were called over. We both agreed that we were definitely not over, so we thoroughly thought through our plan of redress. We even got the help of Morgan Reeser, who has won a few Olympic gold medals and won even more redresses. We found video from the race committee that showed we weren’t over and the start should have been recalled. We felt prepared to go into the room. When Nathan went in, the committee said that we were not allowed to use the video because its “depth” might be distorted, even though in the rules, video is permissible evidence. So we did not get the redress but we learned a lot in the process.
Overall, we finished 14th. We were not super happy with our finish, but we learned a lot. I would like to thank the Coral Reef friends who housed us, the Race Committee, my parents, and the BYCMSSF for its generous support. Without it, events like this would not be possible for Nathan and me.