Santana 22 Team racing out of Santa Cruz

This last weekend saw me crewing on "Sanmam" for Tom and Nancy for a series of team races.  This was a confusing first for me and I can't claim to have my head around it yet.  The notion of two teams consisting of three boats each, six boats total trying to get around a "digital N" shaped course and having the team with the fastest group wins.  I think this may be like a team time trial on bicycles except all the teams race at the same time.  In a team time trial you can only sacrifice a certain number of team members while on the course and the time is taken on the last person to finish.  So, you try to help everyone get across the line as fast as possible without dropping anyone. Except, in this race, members from the opposing teams can use their respective rights of way to hold up or otherwise slow each other down to try an gain an advantage for their own members.

We did six races in a few hours, each race lasted around ten minutes.  We didn't set poles for the downwind legs as they were too short ( not that it was impossible, I think it was a gentlemen's agreement to not run whisker poles ).  The wind came up and then died back and came back up again,  keeping us guessing.  The day was awesome, warm and sunny.  The above video is a collection of the best moments from the various races.  Super close racing with many near misses, light collisions and boats exerting rights over one another ( often your own team mates ).  Fun fun fun!