July 17/18 saw 10 boats turn up to race the Santa Cruz summer open very well run by PRO Adam Borcherding, assisted by Dominic Marietti, Chris, Jeremy Leonard, Bert Trafton and Julieanne Jones. The fleet was some what depleted from usual with a container load of boats in Europe for the upcoming Worlds.

Saturday saw classic Santa Cruz conditions, the fog peeling back to give steady 15-18 knot breezes with flat sea conditions. As would be expected the current World Champion sailing with Rob Woelfel were quick winning the first two races from Jeff Miller and Stuart Park. Behind them some close racing was taking place, I was sailing with Tim Murphy who's boat was missing some vital parts managed a 3^rd in race one and Aaron Ross and Rob Waterman grabbed 3^rd in race two. By the final race Mike and Rob were encountering technical difficulties and retired to the bar with a broken boom, ironic as Mike was saying how he had not seen a broken carbon boom yet. This left Jeff/Stuart to take race 3 from Steve Kleha and Matthias Kennerknecht with Tim and I 3^rd.

Sunday had a posted start time of noon and as everyone knows the wind is not booked to appear before 1PM. So it proved with the AP coming down at 12.59. I had Carl back in the boat for Sunday, fresh off a flight from Singapore and the extra weight certainly gave the boat a bit more pace upwind. We took the fourth race from Mike and Rob who were clearly slowed down by having a lump of metal hanging from their mainsail. Jeff and Stuart rounded out the top 3. Race 5 was a tight affair with little between the leading three but at the line Mike/Rob took the win. Going in to the final race it was all to play for all the way through the fleet and the breeze had built to the best of the day at around 15 knots. Carl and I managed to sneek the win with Mike and Rob just holding off Jeff and Carl despite a capsize on the final run. A 4^th for Aaron and Rob was enough to nip Steve and Matthias for 4^th overall.

A really good weekend of racing, well run by Adam and team in near perfect conditions. A special mention should also be made of Jake and Oscar who had just bought an old Rondar in LA and driven straight up to come and race with us. With a bit of tool box raiding of the fleet they managed to complete three of the six races.

Mike