Nine 40.7 boats competed in the 2005 Beneteau Cup other Beneteau 40.7's in five races. You couldn’t have asked for better conditions for the “Beneteau Cup.”  Considering how long it had been since we raced and none of us had raced together on the boat before, we did fairly well.  There is much that can be done to improve boat speed, both through adjustments on and off the water.  That is something we will be working on so that we can stay closer to the pack at the next regatta.

Friday’s practice was well worth the time spent as we practiced gibing and improved with each try. 

Saturday’s first race started well, though we were a bit late at the start. We were with the fleet all the way up and back down to the first leeward mark, just ahead of Super Gnat when our halyard got stuck, we tore the chute, had to drop out, and I had to go climbing.  We managed to get the halyard unstuck and regrouped for race 2.  We got off to our best start of the day in that race, but lost quite a lot of ground upwind to the other boats.  We stayed with it, though, and finished ahead of Super Gnat, who dropped out with a man overboard in that race.  In the third race we got to the start late and couldn’t keep pace upwind again.  We seemed to keep pace going down, but probably could have used the lighter chute.

The wind was supposed to be lighter but was not on Sunday.  We got better at trimming, but Sunday’s first race was similar to the third race on Saturday.  We seemed to be closer on Sunday, than Saturday, though we continued to fall back from the fleet, staying just in front of the 36.7’s behind us.  Race 2 we got an 8th, with French Toast dropping out.

Armando Silvestre and his crew from Coronado Yacht Club on “Estela-B” followed up their 2005 San Diego NOOD championship with another solid championship performance to win the regatta with 8 points.  Kirk and Kathy O’Brien, “Drumshanbo” had a great second day, scoring 2 bullets and a second place, to finish with 11 points and second place overall.  Brian Ganz and his crew aboard “Austin” moved up the board on the second day to finish in third place.  Mike Dorgan/Steve Wright – “French Toast”, Mike Honeysett – “Wiki Wiki”, Warren Gross – “Silhouette”, Cliff Thompson – “Super Gnat”, Gary Jorgensen – “First Light”, and Russ Chandler – “Changes in Altitudes” completed the scoring.