Shields 9/17/25 Comeback City into Gold Town.

What a great night. In the wake of last week's tribulations, this week we completely turned it around and took home the gold. With only two weeks left in the fall series it feels well timed, and well earned.

It was a lovely night, a fickle east breeze and the end of the flood tide turning the area south of the bridge into a tricky playground, with the bulk of Rose Island and its mantle of shoals and green cans butting aggressively into the top left side of the course. The start line was nestled against the Jamestown mooring field, and 28 boats scuttled back and forth this week, waiting for the first signal. The first two starts were aggressive and both ended in general recalls. At 20 seconds to go on the second start contact was made between the two boats under us as everyone desperately luffed up, too many boats in too small a space all trying hard to go nowhere. On the contact rebound, the spreader of the boat under us caught our backstay, and the tensioning line on the backstay-- the "fuse!"-- snapped. Our luck was in-- not only was that race recalled, but there was an AP as well, giving us precious time to jury rig a fix. Lacking an adequate bit of line, I had the idea to cut the Dyneema downhaul off the spinnaker pole. We finished rigging it as the starting sequence hit two minutes. We threw the jib back up and hied back to the start line, with just enough time for two pre-start tacks before a beautiful on-time start right at the boat.

And we were off! Cam, driving, tacked out right immediately off the start, letting the current do our work for us and lift us towards Rose Island. It was pretty clear from that first beat we were in the lead-- a position that has eluded us all summer. 'No pressure,' and 'Don't fuck it up,' were common mantras in the back of my head.

We got to the top mark and rounded it first, got the shoot up and went into an immediate gybe to avoid Rose Island. I struggled to get the pole snapped back into place, loosing us seconds. We nearly cut inside of the small green can off Rose, but a well timed call from Chris had us honor it. That first downwind was our slowest leg of the race, with 201 and 107 hot on our heels. The pole was also acting up, falling off the mast and onto my head one time, and managing to release the newly captured sheet twice during gybes. (I say "acting up"... one can presume user error I suppose). 201 actually caught us at the end of the downwind and rounded the right gate first, but our choice of left gate and again sticking to the right side of the course again paid off. The windward mark had been shifted to the south side of Rose Island, negating the need to squish up the east side, and we won the second beat handily, once more solidly in the lead as we rounded and set the kite.

Watching the fleet of little boats with their brightly colored kites spread out behind us, I watched Cam watch the wind. Seeming to pay little attention to steering, he looked at the course around us, unhurriedly, almost idly mentioning where the shifts were and that he thought the current was still flooding though it should have shifted. On that call once again we went left gate, our lead well cemented at this point and widening.

The last beat was more of the same, sailing delicately in the dying breeze with a held breath, the don't jinx it mantras going strong. Despite a massive header just before the finish, we crossed it well in first, the held breath finally released into wide grins and highfives.