It’s early December so it must be time to go south to race Star Boats. In the northeast anyway we have had a very mild fall. So the weather was not the tell tail sign that it was time to go south. We needed to look at the calendar.

Twenty nine boats made the trip to Miami. During the week prior to the event we had many boats out on the water. With many new faces giving the Star Boat a try, we had Athens Olympian Mark Mendelblatt with long time Star crew Mark Strube and Andy Horton sailing with Brad Nichol. Each of these teams is starting Olympic programs for 2008. It is great to see new faces in the Star; a boat we all know is the place to be.

Over the weekend we sailed five races, three on Saturday in mainly light conditions. Sunday we finished off the series with two races in great Star Boat weather. We had lots of sunshine and ten to twelve knots of wind.

The racing was close throughout the fleet, with many boats having good results in individual races. Going into the last race it was who beat who in the last race between Mark Mendelblatt and John MacCausland for the overall win. Mendelblatt lead MacCausland throughout the race, eventually finishing second to Andy Horton and Brad Nichol and winning his first Star event on his first try.