MAISA Match Race

The first day of the 2017 Intrepid Trophy MAISA Match Race Championship was an awesome day of sailing. Racing began in the morning under partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the 60s. The wind was 12-18 knots out of the NW and we did the first 3 flights in the Severn River right off the the Robert Crown Center. After a short lunch break, the course was reset off Bembe Beach in a 15-22 knot Northerly breeze. We had a few wipeouts on the downwinds and some minor breakdowns, but we got through the initial round robin of 8 teams. Sunday's racing will begin with stage two, featuring knockout rounds between #1 HWS and #4 GTN in one semifinal and #2 Navy and #3 KP in the other.

Sunday started out on time at 10:00 with the knockout semifinal round. The wind was out of the NE at 8-12 at first, but faded throughout the day. In the first flight, Hobart William Smith and Navy won easily. HWS picked up a pre-start penalty in flight 2 and lightening spotty wind made both matches extremely close. Navy squeaked out a come from behind win against KP to advance to the finals while Georgetown evened the score with HWS forcing a third race to decide the other Nationals berth. It was another hard fought race and Georgetown came out on top again. The final and petit-final took place in very light and spotty breeze. In the one race petit-finals, HWS claimed third place overall against KP. In the finals, Georgetown showed some great light air speed and easily beat Navy 2-0. Both teams will represent MAISA at the Match Race Nationals. The umpire team did a fantastic job all weekend. Huge thanks to ChUmp Charlie Arms and her team of Jeff Borland, AJ Reiter, Curtis Crook, Russ O'Reilly, Manuel Inserni-Pagan, Kaitlyn Norton, Ethan Doherty, Andrew Cole and Nancy Haberland. Thanks as well to Juliet Thompson for her help on the Race Committee. Results can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ganwr3u3SRAJFHh_jhqpkLVW3uGrzcIVyn7eOwENhJo/edit?ts=59ce650e#gid=0