50th St. Thomas International Regatta Day 1
by Carol Bareuther 29 Mar 22:45 EST
March 29-31, 2024
M2 rounding a mark on day 1 of the 50th St. Thomas International Regatta © Dean Barnes
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Multiple races make for competitive racing
The strategy for the team aboard the USA’s Marc McMorris’ Cape 31, M2, on the first day of racing in the 50th anniversary St. Thomas International Regatta was “to not be that guy who made the mistakes,” says James Espey, M2’s tactician. It wasn’t to be, at least not at first. “The first race we had a gear failure and had to change the sail,” says Espey, about the 5.6 nm route set off the southeast side of St. Thomas.
In the second race, which was a slightly longer run around natural marks like Dog Rock and Little Saint James, M2 closed the gap on fellow one-design competitors in CSA Spinnaker 1, the USA’s Sandra Askew’s Flying Jenny, and the UK’s Michael Williams’ ShotGunn. M3 held a podium place but was in third.
Then came the last of the trio of races for the day, and at double the distance of the previous two. “We tossed around a couple of game plans. With the winds unusually out of the west, we decided on a pin-end start rather than the rest of the class favoring the committee boat end,” explains Espey. “That gave us a good start. But what gave us the win was deciding to take down the spinnaker on the…
