COMMENTS FROM HARRY MELGES DOCKSIDE AFTER THE FIRST TWO RACES OF YACHTING KEY WEST RACE WEEK

“The key to our day was that we got out there as soon as we could and sailed up wind a bit and got tuned up for the conditions. It was a light to medium breeze but relatively flat water so not too difficult to keep the boat moving. We just tried to be conservative as the courses were relatively long and I think it was key not to get hung out on one side or the other and to fight for your lanes in the middle, play the compass and watch our positioning on other boats around us.

In the first race we had a really bad start but we managed a really good beat to round out about 7th at the first mark. We seemed to have good boat speed up wind and down and just slowly worked our way up and rounded the final weather mark in second then just got by Karen Gottwald at that finish line. She sailed an awesome race.

Just before the start of race two there was a substantial right hand shift which I think a lot of the fleet didn’t pick up on. The windward end of the line was favoured and the boats up at the top got punched out away from the boats a the leward end pretty quickly. There was more pressure and a bit of a shift to the right so the fleet got spread out on the first beat. We had a real good race with Dave Ullman and we were able to get by him on the last beat, then we just covered him the rest of the time. Overall a good day!”