The Rise of Weene '07 Atlantic Coast Champ

I've felt the goal of the season so far has been to get 608 to the point where she felt like 569 did once tuned up, and it didn't take Eli and I long to figure out that we needed to find that same spar that we used to sail with - the old Ericsson black mast. It seemed to fit our light weight and style perfectly, the top section is quite bendy and depowers well for us.608 came with a Proctor Gamma, which I felt was really fast in light to medium and flat conditions, it's really stiff but heavy as well. In breeze I felt very overpowered with lightweight crews. So we found that Marty had the much coveted Ericsson and Josh was happy to give me his old trailer to get rid of by trading it to Marty. When we first saw the mast we said woah,that looks rough - bent spreader, no gooseneck, etc. - took me some time to source the parts and set it up again. Once I figured it out I thought that with some effort I could rig it for Atlantics, so after few late nights in the backyard with Eli and the mosquitoes we brought it down to the boat and plugged it in, just in time for Friday night. I had done my math well it seemed and the setup was very close to what we had with the Proctor. So we left the dock, all looked good and we felt the boat going fast - and had some good breeze so the rig got the acid test and nothing broke, so we were psyched about that. Once we got our shit together won a race. Day 1 of Atlantics offered us 12-15 knots once the seabreeze came in, perfect for us - the rig and sails looked great and the boat felt better than everbefore. In race 2 we even sailed through the start finish line, of course to see if anyone else was paying attention. Well Herbie was and he doesn't give an inch of slack, so we withdrew from that one. So overall a solid Saturday, three firsts out of four races. Sunday we saw some breeze, 20+ at times. The boat felt great once again, and we led the first race, but inverted the chute on a gybe and that was the end of that, Herbie and Steve passed us, but we held onto 2nd, flying the jib DDW. We held onto some good finishes, no bullets Sunday but decent speed. Jeff and Jon had a great day once they finally left the dock - really fast upwind and finding every wave downwind. We were all psyched to be keeping up with 505s downwind, what a blast! One of the biggest challenges of the weekend was avoiding the Lasers, there were times we were ripping downwind and thought we might make a Laser-Kebab. Thanks to all the out-of-towners for all the new interest,and coming down to make up the most solid 110 at the Newport Regatta inyears, and to Fleet 54 for night after night of competition so tight we've hired an on board therapist to keep the stress levels manageable.

--Ross Weene