2023 ORC East Coast Championships - Results

2nd in Class in the ORC East Coast Championships - lead up to the ORC Worlds in 2024. We took two 1sts on day 1 in moderate conditions. Day 2 saw very light breeze for the distance race. We were ahead at the start but sailed into a wind hole. Other boats behind us could see this, and sailed higher to avoid the hole - where there was wind. They never stopped, while we languished for about 20 minutes, before tacking into some breeze. By the 1st mark, we were 16 minutes behind the 1st place boat. We played catch-up the rest of the race and caught up almost the entire distance - passing half the boats in our class, and would have likely placed 2nd or even 1st in the race had the Race Committee not shortened the course - so we had not more racing left to continue to catch up and pass. Even with a 5th in this race, we were only two points out of 1st place. We were looking forward to race day 3. However, the Race Committee cancelled all racing on day 3 due to high winds. We decided to go out sailing anyway - and set a new boat speed record for this boat - 23 knots in 20-25 knots of wind speed, and we averaged 20 knots of boat speed over a six mile sprint.