The winds continued to fade and we had to make very quick use of our 4-minute sequence to check the line. Annemarie was obviously suffering from shutter finger fatigue as there are no photos of the actual race 3 action.

Uncle Al opted for a pin end start which looked great until Fred Black tacked into a minimal gap off Al's bow and got the best start along with Keith Haill. Between Fred pinching up off Al's bow and Keith coming on fast to windward, Al became the meat in a sandwich and ended up having to foot through to leeward of Fred. From Al's perspective, the only good news was that Heider was off to an even worse start near the RC boat end.

As the beat progressed, it became apparent that Keith was not only "in the groove" but sailing into possibly better wind by holding starboard tack. Despite having noticed this fact, Al tacked across at his first opportunity to stay with the  majority of the fleet and with Heider who had scored a pair of 2nds and was not to be ignored. In the end, Heider banged the right corner, and Al went to the lay line with him before tacking in towards the mark. It soon became apparent that Keith had hit the mother lode as he came romping in along the port lay line with almost half a leg's lead! Kit Wallace had gone left in a less extreme fashion but had gone far enough to round 2nd, a couple of lengths in front of Al who in turn had a healthy lead over 4th.

When Kit was kind (and smart) enough to let SHADES which was going faster in the by now very light airs - go high and pass to windward without a challenge, both Kit and Al settled in to sail the rhumb line in an attempt to catch Keith. Heider rounded about 15th after his ill fated trip to the right corner!
A couple of reaches later, Al had benefitted from watching what the wind was doing for (to????) Keith and had eaten into the lead a little. But as beat #2 began, Keith still had about 300 metres on Al who in turn had pulled comfortably away from Kit. When Keith held port tack until Al rounded the mark and had failed to put himself between Al and the windward mark, Al and Frank decided to tack right at the mark which had minimal disturbed air and water as most of the fleet was still only half-way down the reach. This would make the race to the left side a foot race as Keith predictably tacked when Al did. A few hundred metres later, Heider rounded and it became evident that he was going to hit the right side hard once more. Again Al went right with Heider. Keith however, did not tack with them, a cardinal sin when you have a comfortable lead and only need to make sure that (a) your pursuers don't get any good stuff you don't get, and (b) you stay between your closest pursuer(s) and the next mark.

Al was just about on the starboard lay line when Heider finally tacked. As Al was about to tack he noticed very definite signs of lots of wind only 100 metres off his bow. "Wouldn't it be great if this was also a knock?!" said Frank - and it was!!! SHADES tacked and was soon off on a close reach to the distant windward mark. The wind continued to increase and SHADES began to plane from time to time. It was one of those moments that only come a very few times in a sailing lifetime, and Frank and Al savoured every second of their good fortune. When Keith finally got the wind, it was, of course, a starboard tack lift, just when the time had come where Keith had reached the port lay line! Al ended up crossing Keith by about 4 lengths before rounding onto an exhilarating run where SHADES increased her lead over a demoralized Keith and Sam.

The final brief beat confirmed Al's win while Keith scored a comfortable 2nd over Ryan Mahaffey who completed an excellent come-back with a 3rd ahead of Peter Rahn. Also coming back impressively were Heider and Tom who made it all the way back to 5th before time ran out.

George Blanchard was in the middle of it all once more with a 6th over Kit Wallace who completed his best North Americans race ever with a very nice 7th ahead of John deBoer who scored his third 8th of the day! Rounding out the top 10 were Roger Shepherd and Hans Gottschling. Poor Stefan Larson had been doing quite reasonably until he decided to hit the left side hard up the 2nd beat - a move that dropped him to nearly last when the wind came in from the right, but he recovered to end up with a 15th - his drop race!