Sunday morning arrived with warm, blue skies and the remnants of yesterday's NW winds blowing down the Ottawa River which Lac Deschênes is part of. Only a few seconds to go before the start of the first of today's two races. Looks like the dying winds have caught out a few (most???) of the competitors.

At the other end of the starting spectrum is Bill (937). Tim (7346)  has good and bad in his start: he was on time and moving but has not picked the "marshmallow" that Dave Dellenbaugh recommends one should start to windward of. No indeed, you could hardly do worse than to start where Bill can pinch you off. And to make things even worse ...

Later in the first beat: Marc (3854) felt we'd get better pressure by going a bit further left after Bill crossed us on port earlier. Now we'll see how that worked out, as Bill (yellow) and Andrew come across on starboard. One thing we already know: tacking here, only 100 yards from the port lay line, will not be an option since a tack might well trap us to leeward of the other two right out to, and possibly past, the lay line.  

Eek! Looks like going right has paid off for Jamie (far left) and Brian who sit 1-2 but who should (probably) tack since they're knocked and would get more out of port than Marc (3854) and Andrew (4610) are getting where they are. Conversely, Marc and Al realize that they should ...

... tack and throw in a short hitch on starboard, if for no other reason than to get over where Jamie and Brian are - a side that will be favoured once the shift coming down the river (from the left in the picture above) reaches everyone. And this close to the mark (100 - 200 yards?), this may well be our final shift!! By going across here, Marc and Al fully expect to hit a knock, tack, and increase their edge over Andrew who has not yet tacked. Besides, here we are getting close to the starboard lay line, and anything that postpones getting stuck on the layline is always good, especially with boats ahead of you.  

... our leader, Jamie (4594), tacks for its benefits as well. He might have done better to tack as soon as he was knocked, at which point it was pretty well certain that port would not get any better than this. Instead, Jamie gave in to the very understandable temptation to see if he could actually cross Andrew. He could, but every yard he sailed to prove this to himself was time spent giving away parts of his lead. So why hasn't Marc (r) tacked? Well, we have to protect against Bill who is off to the left and is the only boat that can still beat us in the series. Besides, we thought we saw better breeze to the left and are still lifted on the starboard tack, so we're waiting for that knock that is (almost) sure to come down the river. A knock that ...