Shields 7/16/2025

It was a dark and foggy night...

The night didn't start out that way, though. I knew fog was threatening because I had seen an insidious scouting wall of it slinking up First Beach on my scooter ride over to Ida. On the dock at Ida Lewis, however, the chat was about how rare these great nights for sailing have been so far this season- namely, that we had wind and sun, and in appropriate quantities; Newport's famous sea breeze had actually bothered to show up.

Setting up the boat felt smooth-- a well oiled machine. As we dropped the mooring ball and headed out, I giggled inanely at the full body efforts of a wing foiler to stay on foil. All Thrust No Gains would be the headline of this post if it were a post about wing foiling.

We had a long line, boat favored. One general recall, and then I missed the countdown to go into the second sequence, picking the time back up at 1 minute. We opted for space, and crossed fourth from the pin, crossing our fingers that the left side of the course, and clean air, would pay off. As we tacked our way south we started to get a sense that it hadn't, and on our last leg before tacking onto lay we were held down by two boats on top of us; when we finally did tack we were overlaying. We came around the top mark in the back five, but a good call from the back of the boat had us flow from a clean set into an immediate gybe. This early gybe out saved us. We had a clean run all the way to the left gate, and managed to pass at least 1/3 if not half the fleet. Go team go!

On the second windward leg the fog had appeared and conquered everything south of the bridge, and was threatening the edges of our course. We kept to the right side of the course this time, finding light wind at the bottom that got better the farther south we went. The windward mark and offset were obscured at this point, and we waited for the call to shorten the race, which, like the fog on the course, threatened but never fully manifested. Shoutout to the race committee on their clear communication in this, and I appreciated the repeated messages.

On our second windward mark rounding, knowing that we wanted to mimc the first rounding and gybe back out to the Jamestown side of the course, we set the kite with no pole, keeping it full through the immediate gybe and settling back into our lane. One last gybe down by the gate, and then we followed what is becoming our tried and true leeward gate rounding procedure which is to wait on jib up and kite down until the last second, and blow through the gate congestion with speed. The method seems to be working, and our strikes the last few weeks have been fast and clean.

Back up on our happy right side of the course, a wild guess on where our layline was as the mark was hidden in the patiently waiting fog bank, and then satisfaction as we laid perfectly across the finish. 11th, as it turned out. A great turnaround from bottom five, and significantly better than the boat we buddy-boated down to the last bottom mark with, and who came back up the left side of the course instead of staying right, with worse results.

Sometimes it really is that simple: technique gets you farther than energetic thrusting, and sometimes right really is Right.