158th ANNUAL REGATTA presented by ROLEX: First race day

We raced around the island today. The race started in about 10-11 knots, and built to 16-17 knots by the time we sailed around and started coming back upwind.
We started on the boat end of the line, to windward of Rambler. After a few minutes of sailing upwind, we had to take a clearing tack. Once we found our mode we felt comfortable upwind but as we exited the channel, the Wizard (our old boat) had some more favorable current and got around us before the top mark. Both boats set overlapped with each other, sailing high angles to try and stay clear of the slower boats that had started before us. We gybed countless times all the way down the channel. Half way down, a small tear appeared in the bottom part of the kite. We kept a close eye on the tear and after a few more gybes, it started to get worse. So we decided to gybe peel to the next kite, Although the maneuver was a bit noisy as we are still getting settled as a crew on the new boat, it went relatively smoothly. On the whole run we kept trading places with Shockwave and Wizard. All the boats are incredibly close and the racing this weekend will be close, especially in the light air. On the long beat back to the finish line, we split from the fleet and made a very nice gain that won us the race. Rambler was first to finish, with us crossing the line in second but winning the race on corrected.
It was nice to win the first race but we are under no illusion that it will be easy. In the light air, our competition is very quick and will be very hard to beat. The forecast for this weekend is for light air so we are hoping that the sea breeze will fill in nicely.