Press Release from Krista Paxton. Pictures by Andrew Jowett.
Sept 18th 2019
Day three dawned with 12-15 knots of breeze much to the delight of competitors and the race organizers. Fortunately, PRO Matt Bounds had already moved racing to start and hour earlier and was able to take advantage of good the conditions.
Todd Riccardi/Dalton Tebo, overall leaders going into this morning’s racing, had a breakdown and headed to shore as the starting sequence for race 1 began. The double trapping conditions challenged competitors to navigate the short, steep chop that had built up over the preceding night. Ultimately Robby Daniel/Gary Chu won the race with a Shack-attack (Ken/Eric Marshack) on their heels in second and Maxime Loiselle/Oliver Pilon in third.
Three more races were held with dropping breeze and lingering wave state that made teams really work hard to find the right gear. In true gentleman fashion, Daniel/Chu suffered a breakdown that took them out of race two, matching Riccardi/Tebo’s DNS in race 1. However, Daniel/Chu had all bullets after that, bringing them to lead the series by 3 points at days end.
Lise Duchesne/Patrick Caux were the inspirational story of the day, moving from 18th to 9th place with all top ten finishes going 7, 3, 8, 3. After yesterday’s OCS Katie Flood/Eric Brattinga recovered with a strong climb up 5 places in the standings. Chris Blake/Matt Werner moved up 4 places and capping the day with a solid performance in race 6 finishing 5th.
Currently, Robbie Daniel/Gary Chu have taken the series lead with Todd Riccardi/Dalton Tebo, Maxime Loiselle/Oliver Pilon, Ulrich Gollwitzer/Liam Walz, Steve Stroebel/Michael Risoer completing the top 5 overall.
Lise Duchesne/Patrick Caux overtook Claus/Jesse Schnabel to become the top mixed team and remained the top female skipper.
The final day of racing is scheduled to continue tomorrow, Thursday Sep 19that 10am. Results can be found at https://yachtscoring.com/event_results_cumulative.cfm?eID=6144 or check out the USF18 Facebook page to see all the pictures by event photographer Andrew Jowett.