A team of three FBYC trained sailors placed first in Nantucket Race Week, One Design Series, Rhodes 19 Class, with three days of racing. The Toni Too was skippered by Sophie Massie, with crew of her father, Mike Massie, and Noel Clinard. Over three days and nine races, they placed 1-3-1-2-2-[7]-[DNS]-2-2 with the two bracketed races thrown out. Results Here.

The racing was characterized by moderate to heavy winds and strong harbor currents. Sophie drove with Mike trimming jib and working foredeck and Noel trimming main and spinnaker. The upwind speed of Toni Too was the deciding factor with frequent leads at the windward mark, which turned into a liability in one race. Days One and Three were traditional round the buoys races, with Day Two featuring a crazy beach start with unusual rounding marks. The team was First on Day One.

On Day Two, the boats started with sails down, beached, with one crew standing on the beach. During that the race the boats rounded dreaded "Mark C," a commercial fisherman "Miss China," moored in the channel with heavy current and a massive wind shadow, a sailing "hazard" so to speak. The dreaded Mark C also played a role in the team's seventh place in Race 6, when the course board was mistakenly read as a "C" (Miss China) instead of an "G" (Green Inflatable). As the team approached "Miss China" upwind, it was leading the Rhodes 19 and many of the Indian Fleets and, having no one to follow, erroneously doused the spinnaker and rounded Miss China, only to look back and see the other boats proceeding to a green inflatable hidden further up the harbor among anchored boats. After resetting the spinnaker and doubling back, the team still finished mid-fleet and saved a Third Place award for Day Two.

The team was Second on Day Three in a bizarre series. In the first race of the day, the team started in a raging current sweeping boats across the starting line. The Team correctly anticipated the current and was well behind a group of boats swept into the pin and into contact with one another. Toni Too jibed away and crossed the line on port tack in clear air, leading the fleet. After a long close race she finished second only to learn that the Race Committee had issued a General Recall undetected by almost the entire fleet except the two boats doing turns for their collisions at the pin. Only those two boats restarted and one of them was disqualified for crossing through a closed gate, with the result that the finisher got a bullet and the rest of the fleet was DNS or DSQ. That result catapulted the single finisher into Second Place for the Day and left Toni Too Third.

Happily, with two throw outs, the Toni Too Team still finished with a resounding First for the week. As they say: "That's Sailboat Racing."