It is hard to believe we are deep into September as I write this.  There are just a handful of races left — in fact, likely just one last JYC (developing conflicts on September 26th and October 3rd, whaaa) and the Fall Race Around Prudence.  We’ve had an amazing run.  Sail For Hope was a reasonable finish and pretty good when you look at our result across the PHRF fleet, as was CYC ATI.  Prince Henry saw us with a very strong 2nd just behind our good friends on Arigato.  We also managed to complete an Around Aquidneck Challenge (on EASILY the nicest day we’ve ever done one).  Warm, sunny and a moderate breeze in the mid-teens and a perfect NW along with favorable tides netted us the second fastest spinnaker rounding since we started keeping records.  There are a lot of “good” days left and several serious competitors so it is way too early to celebrate, but we can feel good about notching one reasonable attempt for 2021.

A little further back in the calendar was Ida, which was called off the morning of the race — a great disappointment, especially given the two beautiful days that followed.  For some reason the next day I felt EXACTLY as if I had done the Ida — I just can’t remember why.  ; )  And even Safe Harbor Race Weekend. for which I had to not race on Day One, basically immediately putting us out of any contention, was still a great success with us taking a bullet in one of the W4 short courses, around the drop marks, leading to an overall 3rd place finish for that day.  Did I mention the endless lobster and bubbly (sorry Steve!)?  ; )  So no complaining — this has been an amazing season and there’s still some time left.

Speaking of the end of the season, I’ve decided to leave Spirit in through October so hopefully we can squeeze in a couple of fun sails.  The boat will haul at Wickford again.  I’m not quite sure about work items as we’ll give the bottom paint an assessment once Spirit is in her trailer.  But it could be a quiet winter under the cover.  Thank you for making it out on the race course given all of the hassles of work and life and giving us a season even a few of our competitors have noticed is on a good trend — the boat and sails haven’t changed over the last couple of years so that can only mean one thing: it has been you guys sailing the boat faster than ever before.  : )