At long last Icon is back in the water after her winter pimping.  We were hoping to participate in the AYC Foul Weather Race, but unfortunately the weather was so "foul" the travel lifts were not moving in the snow so we had to sit that event out!

We did however make the AYC Lawson Reef race on March 5 -- many things were not ready and we had our new development crew onboard, but we managed to finish without breaking anything and everyone had a good time.

As far as the actual race was concerned, the winds were light  and we had to throw in a tack right before the start in order to make the line.  This made us a little late, but we quickly made up for it.  We reached out to Rosario Strait riding the ebb as long as we could.  Eventually we had to start tacking, with each tack feeling a little more of the rumored westerly in the Strait.

By the time we got to Lawson Reef the wind started to shut off and the other boats had cut into our lead substantially.  We struggled between Lawson Reef and R2, trying our Wind Seeker and then our A1.   Eventually we settled on the A1 and managed to round R2 after a painful crossing.

Once we rounded R2 we managed to catch a little breeze and ran directly to the finish line with only a few gibes near Green Point.  During this run we horizoned the rest of the fleet behind us as the wind appeared to be shutting off behind us.

We ended up taking 1st overall, but not because we sailed particularly well as it was mainly because the wind shut off behind us!  Our next event is a much longer race on the 19th of March -- the AYC Smith Island Race!