Dramatic Ending Crewed Lightship

A great illustration of what happened right before the line, we are past the gate at this point
(sorry for the spam, apparently the photos didn't make it to the blog the first time around

South Tower Demon (and actually I was grinding on the low side, unable to see the spinnaker, so the 'cross-sheeting' project is now going way up on the list of priorities. We could have had a 1st or 2nd with it!)

Mike (blue hull) creeping on us after our roundup, and after over 12 miles of downwind racing + some 6 minutes or so of upwind catchup at the weather mark

Byebye the line but not by much!

Still pretty satisfied with the result as more so than the actual result on paper, I feel that we have made a ton of progress over the last few months:
1) we had a great start
2) we had some great boat speed, particularly upwind (we were slowly gaining on El Raton when on similar courses)
3) we made one good informed tactical call by paying attention to wind and weather pattern (and one bad one but it was a really close call ;-))
4) really nice sail trim throughout the race EXCEPT for the last few hundred yards ;-)
5) we had very good weight management with a very active and focused crew despite our weight handicap (4 Vs 5 people)
6) we kept up with two of the top E27 sailors - in particular, this has been Mike's trademark race.7
) we didn't lose THE bucket

Certainly think that there is some winning material in there. And not getting a first this time makes us even hungrier :-)
Photos purchased from Erik Simonson (www.h2oshots.com)