2004 Masters

Report by Rick Brethorst 

It was a great turnout for this years Masters with a total of 49 boats from 7 different countries sailing.

Saturday

In the first race of the day the wind was around 8 knots out of the southeast.  The race committee took us out about 2 ½ miles.  We finally got off a start around 1:30 after the wind settled in.    I would have thought that since it was the Masters the boats would have been a little slower to get up to the line at the start but that wasn’t the case.  In fact the guys were aggressively attacking the line and we had several general recalls before getting a clean start.  The guys that went left were the first to the mark.  Bill Fields sailing his new Folli got out early and thought he got a bullet in the race until he learned that we had been OCS in the race.  Ten boats were scored OCS in the race affecting the standings.  Bainton / Bromby were first, Whipple / Strubr were second,  and the Gould's were third.

 The second race got off shortly after the first.   The wind seem to pick up a little with some more crews over the sides.  But was slowly dieing by the end of the race.  The right seemed to pay off in the first beat but the left seemed better in the second beat.  In both races we had oscillations of 5 to 10 degrees, maybe an occasional 15  Hicks / Munce were first,  the Gould's second,  and De Widder / Van Wiekerk were third.

The night Austin Sperry hosted the party at his place and everyone paid tribute to Frank Zagarino at the end of the evening.  Frank was instrumental in getting the Masters started years ago and the event has grown from 7 boats to 49.

Sunday

Everyone got out the to the race course and we bobbed around for awhile until the seabreeze kicked in.  After one postponement because it looked like the whole fleet was over the line with a minute before the start the black flag came out.  Only two boats were black flagged an retired at the windward mark.  A little bit after the start a nice 40 degree  lefty came in the the boats on the left were the first to the mark.  The race was abandoned however on the 2^nd beat because the weather mark was in the wrong place in comparison to the compass change given.