2009-2010

It has been a long time since I last updated the Ender Racing blog....too long. It was important for the team to take some time off to focus on other parts of our life; work, family, relationships, etc. Personally I think after the team fell short at the Detroit Cup I was emotionally drained. Then a few weeks after that we suffered another heartbreaking defeat after going up on Bill Hardesty 2-0 in the finals of the last CMRC event of 2009; after that I needed to take a break and re-evaluate my priorities on the water.

To bring everyone back up to speed with the team, after the 2009 Chicago Mac Team Ender continued to sail at a high level through all of the CMRC events. We received an invitation to the Grade 2 match race, the Detroit Cup, which became our primary focus going into the end of the summer. Being from Detroit, having raced in the river all my life, having grown up match racing on the Ultimate20's, and having finished 4th with Dave Perry the previous year I was confident that our team could make it out of the round robin, and our goal was to make the final four. Our team montra has always been, "don't come out flat," and we did not dissappoint ourselves. After the round robin we were in a three way tie for first and in a great position to continue sailing well and reaching our goal. Unfortunately some off-the-water issues came up that slightly shifted our focus going into the final round. At that level no team can afford to have any distractions, and the team that is more focused will normally prevail....unfortunately that was not us and we ended up losing every race on the final day, falling from 1st to 6th. Emotionally draining, and dissappointing on MANY levels.

After the D-Cup Ender Racing had one more match race at the CMRC. I was fortunate enough to be able to sail with Jack Jennings (Ender Racing Team Member), a good friend Rob Morton, and my older brother, Adam. Adam and I had not sailed together in a match race since about 10 years ago after I childishly blamed him exclusively for our poor performance at an event. Regardless, it was great to get to sail with him again, and it was quickly apparent that the both of us had matured over those ten years, both personally, and our sailing abilities. We had a great time, and sailed our asses off. Jack sailed at his highest level of the summer, calling the best tactics of any regatta yet; Rob was fantastic on the bow with no practice time and in lumpy, and puffy conditions (extremely hard), and Adam was flawless, quiet, and always knew the right thing to say at the right time to keep us all calm and focused. It truly was one of my favorite sailing experiences in a VERY long time.

Anyway, that takes care of 2009 as the team did little sailing over the winter with Jack competing and traveling in the Star class over in Europe, Mike Rehe on Equation for the winter in the islands, and me needing to focus on work. 2010 started slow but we have done plenty of sailing up to this point. I will try to write updates on the more recent events over the next few weeks. This is just a quick update for everyone, the match racing season is in full swing and our schedules are pretty much full. Sorry for going away for so long (not that anyone still watches, or even did); but we're back now, looking to build on past experiences, and hopefully show the riff-raff how out of their league they are. :) - Don't come out flat!