In dominating fashion, Jim Bowers and crew Alexa Schuler won an, near record setting 6th Interclub National Championship, sailed at the Rochester Canoe Club in Irondequoit Bay on April 28-29.
Bowers, using the new “Radic+12”, had an amazing
9 wins in the 16 race no throw out series and, even counting an OCS in race #3, bested 2 time past IC National winners John and Molly Baxter by
54 points! Irondequoit Bay gave the competitors a wide variety of wind conditions throughout the weekend with Saturday featuring a Northeastly breeze while Sunday’s direction was predominantly Northwest.
Jim and Alexa, back in the boat after a couple of years away from frostbiting, ordered a new NorthRadIC+12 mainsail just 2 weeks before the event. The RadIC+12 was designed using input from Jim to make a sail that had similar performance to the RadIC but a slightly fuller shape which, while more mainsheet critical, gave Jim the gears he felt he needed in a large range of conditions.
I spoke to Meredith Killion, sailing with Ted Ferrone to an 8th place finish and she offered her observations from the weekend:
"The conditions were very shifty and puffy. It was very tricky sailing for everyone and, except Jim and Alexa, the scoreboard showed it. It reminded me of what the sailing is like at Dartmouth and Tufts. The first day the wind was out of the NW, very light 4-8 kts. I think I sat on the rail once. It seemed like the left always had more wind. On the left side, the breeze basically had a straight shot from a big bridge, while the right had tall cliffs which seemed to block the wind at the windward mark. Sometimes there were little righties, but you basically couldn't see them on the water, and you had to react quickly and use them to get back to the left. The downwind tactics were complicated with by a restricted finish line set in the middle of the downwind leg. It made the downwind tactics a little skewed to have to sail all the way around the finish line."
"The second day, the wind was more from the left, starting at probably WNW, but sometimes the shifts went as far as straight W. The strength was probably 10-15 kts. The breeze was much easier to see on the water from this direction. Puffs would move straight across the course (as opposed to bleeding down from the top). It was pretty easy to link puffs to each other up and down the course. Then in the middle of the day the wind shifted back to NW and increased to15-20 kts. The sides of the course were much more even than the day before from the same direction, probably just because it was so much windier. Upwind and downwind was more about boat speed than shifts. It was definitely good to have a compass to know if you were lifted or headed, especially in the really windy races."
North Facts:
North Sails were 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11…….
North Sails won 16 of 16 races
For information on North One Design Interclub sails please contact any of the North Interclub Team.