The Mid America's Cup will be held today

Every sailing person has heard of the America's cup.  Well, in North Dakota we have the mid America's cup.  So Kadizzle and The Commander are up early getting ready to blast up to the lake. We have to get the boat ready to race.  Ideally the boat will be as light as possible so that means we need to pump out the waste out and the fresh water.  This will be important to be light in light winds.  Our ship has a crew, Stroupini, Diane, and the Kadizzles.  The most important part of a sailboat race is the start.  A sailboat race is unusual because it has a moving start.  There is a magic line you cannot cross until the exact time.  So this means sailboats must jockey for position prior to the start. This is the most fun.  One must gauge the speed of the boat as it runs for the line.  Ideally the boat is at top speed and the first to cross.  Now to accomplish this the skipper must know the exact time to the second.  Crew members must yell out the countdown.

So off we go to the lake.  This could be just one more cursed year with light winds.  Kadizzle has checked with The National Weather service in Bismarck.  It looks like we may get winds from the south at about 5 then maybe a shift to the West.  When there is a wind shift often a calm goes with it.  Nothing is more dreaded for a sailboat race than no wind.  Hopefully there will be a decent turn out for the race.  We could end up racing against ourselves.  A sailboat race generally is not real exciting to watch. This is especially true if you have no clue about how sailboats are raced.  One major problem is the boats on our lake race in the PHRF system.  This handicap system means no one can tell who is winning until the race is over.  It is a handicap system whereby one must win by a certain margin to actually win.  Since our boat is the fastest we must beat the other boats by a good margin.  That means we could be ahead for the whole race, but still lose. Until the final calculations are made no one will know.  So all we can do during the race it try to figure out how far ahead we are, if indeed we are ahead.