Bissell Racing

First of all, I was honored to be a member of such an awesome team.  As our fearless leader, Dr. Beeckman, put it “I love it when a plan comes together .”  It was incredible how smoothly things went (on the water) considering not a single one of us had ever sailed flying scots before and haven’t team raced together since I was in high school.  Since I am only intimately familiar with the crew work of my own crew, my hat goes off to Jack Hogan and Cryssa Byers for an unbelievable job.  However, from my point of view, it looked like the other crews Mandy, Matt, Alan and Tracey were rockstars too.
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The Regatta format began with a single round robin for all 9 teams.  Then they divided the teams up into the top 4 and bottom 5.  One more round robin was completed by both groups.  If there was more time, the top team from silver would have moved up and the bottom team from Gold would have moved down and another round robin would have been sailed. 

Unfortunately we ran out of time and the results were taken from the two previous round robins.  In the first round robin, our only two losses came from Southern YC and Bay Waveland YC; the two teams I had designated from the beginning as “regatta favorites.”  Our 6-2 record propelled us into the final four to be raced on Sunday. 

New York YC, Southern YC, Bay Waveland YC, and NHYC comprised the top group.  We had really close races with each team.  The two most exciting races came against the two teams we had lost to in the previous round.  In the Bay Waveland Race, all three of our boats fell behind early.  They rounded the first mark in a 1,2,3 combination to our 4,5,6.  By the leeward mark, we had converted to a 2,3,5, but one of their boats fouled Andy so hard that even after he spun a penalty circle, Andy was still in last.  In team racing, this is called a professional foul, and will add 10 pts to your teams score in the race.  We crossed the finishe line in a 2,4,5 but because they had a 10pt penalty, we won the race. 

In our final race against Southern, we had a 1,3,5 coming into the leeward mark.  A giant puff of wind caught their 2nd place boat off guard and wiped them out enabling our team to move into a solid 1,2 combination.  We crossed the finish line in a 1,2,6 thus putting us in a 3-way tie for first overall in the regatta.  The tie breaker came down to who beat who in the final race and since we went undefeated when it counted in the final round, we won the tie-breaker.

The Soiland Trophy was donated by NHYC to Southern YC to help replenish their trophy case after hurricane Katrina.  Robert Soiland was the first commodore of NHYC and won the cup in a distance race from Newport Beach to San Clemente Island.  It has now been rededicated to a yacht club challenge team race event.