And practical, too, is this year's regatta shirt. The map of the lake on its back is something that was missing from this year's SI's!!! Can't you just picture it? "Turn around, please, sweetheart." - "What the heck are you doing back there, you dirty old man??!!" - "Just checking our course to the gybe mark, dear!"

With most of the nearest pursuers doing likewise and poised to pass if any error was made, Marc and I admired this as the safe move, even though it meant that Dave was more or less covering us since "great minds were thinking alike". I suspect that both Dave and I had the same reaction when Mary and Pat made a "high risk, low reward" move by tacking around #4 and going straight across to the north shore, where, to be fair, their first-leg lead had come from.
Still, going right across the lake first was a risky move, especially this early in a no-drop series! Please note that the following is meant to be educational rather than critical of Mary and Pat who sailed a great race any way you look at it! The best possible reward here for Mary was a move from 2nd place to 1st, and many things had to go just right for this to happen. Meanwhile, at least two things could have happened that could easily have lost her a number of boats:
1.  so near the windward shore, the risk of getting less wind pressure was significant, and
2. once she reached the layline, any shift in wind direction had to hurt only Mary: a starboard lift would let those nearer the south shore either lay the line without tacking or sail a much shorter port tack than Mary and Pat had already sailed, while a starboard knock would let many of us tack and cross Mary.
"She's toast!" I may have mentioned to Marc. Famous last words, indeed. Because Mary and Pat came rolling in and nipped out Dave for the race 1 win! Congratulations, Mary and Pat, on a fine win! You moved your boat extremely well!
What is the lesson here? Well, we looked at what Mary had done and asked ourselves: Did she know something we didn't? We couldn't think of anything, nor could we find any flaws in our decision to sail the long tack first and, more importantly to stay with the many boats who were so close behind us. Let's face it, even when you play the odds perfectly, they are still odds and you won't win every time. So you don't want to let a set-back such as this ruin your strategic thinking and make you stop choosing the option that gives you the best chance of getting lucky.
Later on this day, in race 3, we in fact ended up going to the north shore with the ladies in exactly the same winds, but had a valid reason for doing so. We were lying a close 1-2 and well ahead of #3. Thus it would have been foolish for us not to cover and risk letting Mary get a break that we did not. Besides, by this time Mary, Dave and I were all sitting at 4 points and tied for series first, well up on the pack, so that beating each other had become the #1 priority for each of us. If someone else got lucky and came from well back to beat us, we didn't care all that much - so long as we could hold off Mary and Dave.

The look of disbelief on Dave's face here is priceless, as he prepares to make the short tack to the finish line and begins to realize that Mary has successfully tiptoed through the minefield and is about to snatch his first away. The look on my face was no doubt much the same, though perhaps a bit more "gruntled", since after all, we had started the leg 3rd and had at least lost no places.

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