The leeward mark produced an interesting rounding battle between Heider and Al with an odd background story. Just the night before, Uncle Al had regaled Marc Bennett with the tale of his exciting attempt to get buoy room and win the final race of the Danish Nationals against Anders Friis. His problem had been that for the first time in his nearly 50 years of racing, Al needed a leeward overlap but was only inches from Anders' transom so that he was afraid to sit right behind and blanket Anders because if the latter slowed down, Al would tail end and foul him. Instead, Al aimed his bow just a bit to leeward of Anders' transom but was unable to take enough of Anders' wind to gain the overlap. Marc listened to this tale and chuckled: "You should have done what we did in 470's in Jamaica," he said, "heel the boat way to windward and take his wind that way!" Well, Al had to admire that idea and drink another Appleton Estates rum to its beauty, even if it seemed unlikely that he would still be racing in another 50 years when the next such moment was due to arrive.

But in fact, the moment arrived the very next day as Heider (port) converged with Al (starboard) about 100 m. from the mark. Not wanting to risk crossing in front of Al while on port, Heider chose to gybe and ended up on starboard just to windward and less than one metre ahead of Al. Remembering Marc's advice, Al aimed his bow just leeward of Heider's transom and then heeled SHADES 45º to windward. The strategy worked like a charm and before we knew it, we were sailing into the triangle between Heider's hull and his boom, and Heider was forced to luff up and keep clear, and most importantly, give Al room at the mark.
A quick douse and gybe left Al with a 3-4 length lead over Heider and about 50 m. over John Cawthorne. The two leaders both chose to go right which had been the advantaged side on both the first beat and the run. Alas for Uncle Al, Heider again outpointed him by a good 10º and again there was that loud noise from the transom! This time, Al finally discovered what was going on: The seizing connecting the two parts of the adjustable bridle was slipping and the port side was now so loose that the boom would come in no further than about one foot to leeward of centre. The lack of pointing was explained! The good news was that starboard tack was not affected but when Al finally tacked across, Heider crossed by 3-4 boatlengths and promptly tacked to cover. A strange tacking duel began in which Heider was superior on port tack and Al slightly better on starboard. With the boats nearing the starboard layline, most of the sailing was done on starboard and the third time the boats met, Heider could not cross and chose to lee bow. This happened twice more and the second time was crucial. Heider's first instinct was to cross behind Al and get starboard when the two converged near the mark, but in the end Heider tacked to lee bow Al who again had to tack away. And here, the wind gods smiled on Al who tacked about 50 metres later, still short of the starboard layline, and shortly thereafter got a 30º lift inside Heider and up to the mark. 3rd-place John Cawthorne who had gone right also lost a lot on this shift.

For Frank and Al, the remaining challenge was to hold off Heider and Tom up the remaining 1/3 of a beat to the finish. Fortunately for SHADES, the new wind direction meant an almost one-tack beat on starboard, our good tack. A "council of war" during the spinnaker leg had come up with the strategy that we would tack  right after rounding to put most of our 50 m. lead towards the finish line. If Heider went right, we would tack to our bad tack to cover and then see what developed. The strategy just barely worked as Heider went out past the starboard layline, and we tacked and did likewise, ending up well to windward but slightly astern of Heider. This left us the option of tacking to leeward and ahead as necessary if we had lost our lead. As it turned out, we still had enough lead to tack about one length right off Heider's bow. Even though we could easily lay the windward (RC boat) end of the finish line, we grimly pinched up with Heider, trying to force him to foot off into our wind shadow. It wasn't until we were very close to the line and virtually able to beam reach that we footed off and beat Heider by a small margin similar to the one he had in race 1.
Early leaders, Roger Shepherd and Joanne Kumpf were again 3rd although they almost gave it away  by sailing the short tack first and overlaying the finish line while John Cawthorne sailed "by the book", took the longer tack first and just missed grabbing 3rd.
Paul and Mark Taylor, another of the early leaders, ended up with a 5th ahead of Bill Fyfe with Mike Codd who in turn edged out Hans Gottschling for 6th place.