The lake breeze continued to build and we were soon off on a well set line for our fourth and final race of the day. The chips were down for defending champs, Al and Tom (2nd from right) and they responded by grabbing a perfect start at the RC boat end.

Meanwhile, the leaders going onto the run were left in peace to round the right (mark) end of the start line obstruction. A wise move for Mark who is flying the spinnaker while Denise does a fine job of steering - no sense putting his rookie helm into heavy traffic right away!!

Peter and Annelies look excellent against the Toronto skyline as they make their final approach to the mark. Soon they will find out whether they will have to pay for risking this approach from the right where they are on port tack and will be outside boat in any buoy room situation.

... a fine line of clear air while defending the inside against the constantly threatening and very speedy Marc (3854) who thinks just like Al and wants to do the same thing as Al is doing. Meanwhile, Colin and Heather are making do very well without their spinnaker and have their boat flawlessly trimmed for a two-sail run. Doug (1366) is in a more relaxing spot here but wants to be careful not to give up his inside and starboard advantage by meeting any port boats (like Mark and/or Peter!) too early so that they can cross his transom and end up with buoy room.

The excitement mounts as we get very near the leeward mark. Too bad we can't see the mark which I think is hidden behind the 1366 boom. As I recall,  we (600) rounded onto beat #2 ahead of Marc (SHADES) just before Mark and Peter got to the leeward mark.

... Denise and Mark are gybing. It's still a close race among the top three, and Al continues to defend the inside with the leeward mark not too far away. With just a very short one third of a beat to go to the finish after that, whoever rounds first will have a big advantage in that the followers will have to take leftovers and have little time to recover from that. In the end, Tom and Al made an excellent (fairly early!) douse and pushed both Marc and Mark into tacking away to starboard when you could almost lay the long finish line on port. Al then picked a nice flat spot in which to tack and cover, knowing Marc and Mark would have to come back towards him soon or risk overstanding the finish line. By this time, Al and Tom had enough lead that they could cover from windward and ahead and thus cruise to victory without the worry of a boat dead astern climbing out to windward above the still suspect pointing capabilities of W600.