NWISA Silver Fleet Race

20 Northwest High School teams, having earned their spot in the Gold fleet at this year's NWISA Fleet Race (AKA Doublehanded) District Championship, and 24 Silver fleet teams converged on Sail Sand Point to battle it out for the two berths to the Mallory.

After a rainy morning and a 1000 competitors meeting, skies began to clear as Gold fleet headed onto the water, after a short postponement on the water, boats were sent back ashore for a lengthy postponement. A light, but consistent easterly started to fill in around 1400, RC set a course and Race 1A was sailing and completed as the breeze died off. After another postponement, a light northerly finally approached around 1600 and ended up building to 8-10 mph. Two more A races and races 1B and 2B were completed in this breeze over the next few hours. Sailors were treated to a BBQ dinner as their teammates sailed.

Boats headed on the water for a 0930 start, but there was insufficient breeze. Race 4A was started but abandoned as southerly and westerly shifts continued to battled it out all morning. After courses were reset for the prevailing west wind, race 4A, 3B and 4B were completed by 1200, all races were in wildly inconsistent breeze which left sailors looking for any sort of pattern. Race 5A and 6A were completed by 1330, but not enough breeze ever materialized for any complementary races to be completed in B fleet by the 1500 deadline. Silver fleet was able to sneak in a race 5B. Two silver fleet protests were heard at the end of the day, both were disallowed.

Big thanks yous to a lot of people for this one: SSP, it's staff and volunteers, PROs Jay and John Renehan, and their RC volunteers, Jennifer and Eric Chipps for being on meal duty, and all the other SSP parents who helped at and leading up to the regatta.

Congratulations to the Olympia Bears and the Bainbridge Spartans on securing 1st and 2nd respectively in Silver fleet.

The following chart shows the relative rank of the teams as of the race indicated. Note that the races are ordered by number, then division, which may not represent the order in which the races were actually sailed.

The first place team as of a given race will always be at the top of the chart. The spacing from one team to the next shows relative gains/losses made from one race to the next. You may hover over the data points to display the total score as of that race.