No wind throughout the day made last evening’s race doubtful as the RC made its way out onto the lake. (Thanks to Diana Voss for helping out on RC.) However, by 6pm the wind steadily filled in from the south, from Dunhams Bay to Dome Island. A W4 was selected with the RC anchored off Yankee, using the South Canoe government mark as the windward mark (all islands to port). The start saw all boats start without incident on the short line, with Spirit getting the windward advantage on most boats. Wild Thing immediately tacked off to port taking advantage of short duration lift. Cut Loose followed and the fleet swapped a lot of tacks on the upwind leg.
Vaporize worked its way through the lulls to round first at the 18-minute mark and led the fleet back through the slot between Speaker Heck and Canoe Islands. Animal, Wild Thing, Spirit, and Witch Way were all close at the rounding. Vaporize gybed towards the west side of the course, opting to not cover Wild Thing and ran into one of the lulls spotting the course just a few minutes later. Animal tried the extreme east side and also lost ground. Wild Thing stayed slightly east of Spirit and Witch Way and established the lead into the second mark.
The next upwind leg looked very spotty so the RC changed and shortened the course to a line between the RC and a point on the south island. Coming out of the leeward mark, Spencer and crew stayed in a stripe of higher velocity wind to establish a solid lead. Spirit and Witch Way, in close company, followed next. Spencer continued to move away from the fleet with an isolated lift and two quick tacks up the final leg. Spirit held off Witch Way while Vaporize, a few boat lengths back, tried to find wind on the eastern side of the course. Brad found himself in between Witch Way and Vaporize on the last leg. Even though the wind got even more spotty, the velocity in the other spots was quite high. Spencer on Wild Thing led the fleet across the line by more than four minutes, but Spirit had gained enough ground to take the win for the night by just 15 seconds on corrected time. Witch Way took third both across the line and on corrected. With two races left in the season the point race for third and fourth is close.
