This year I was sitting in Sunny San Diego at the Ullman Sails Lofton Wednesday and was called by a friend of mine in Seattle asking if I was interested in putting a team together for the weekend to sail Melges 24’s in Seattle for PSSC.  I then made a few phone calls.  The first was to my friend and Ullman Sails One Design manager Eric Shampain.  Eric is one of the most knowledgeable Melges 24 sailors in the world.  He had already been called for the same boat and had started working on the crew as well.  He contacted Kristen Lane of Team Brick House who was the previous owner of the boat we were to sail.  With 3 of us set we got our tickets and hopped on a plane to Seattle.  We worked feverishly to find the last person.  The owner of the boat happened to be an old friend of mine that I had not seen in 14 years.  When we landed in Seattle I put out a message on Facebook looking for a crew that weighed less than 130 pounds.  In minutes another friend offered up his 12 year old son that was a junior sailor.  We now had a crew and a crew that could weigh in. 
We arrived at Shilshole bay at the same time as the boat arrived coming down from Nanaimo BC The area started to flood with Melges 24’s.  16 in all showed.up from Seattle, Canada, and Idaho.  Within a few hours we had the boat set up. Crew weighed in and were able to go out and practice.  The team got along really well and worked well together especially since we had never sailed together as team before. The Melges were sailing on the south course and the larger boats were sailing on the north course.
 The wind during the regatta was very shifty and hard to predict.  We had a bad start in the first race and in turn missed the first shift but came back to a 7th.  The next few races we had it figured out and started rapidly improving scoring a 3,2,1,1,1 to finish of the first day of racing.
It was great to catch up with my Northwest friends at the party on Saturday and have some great bbq northwest salmon.
Day 2 started in an unusual easterly but started on time.  The wind shifted in the end of the second race to a Northerly and filled in nicely. Since we started off well with a 3,2,2 we were able to sail very conservative on the last two races to finish off the regatta in first.
The San Juan 24’s had 6 boats out and some close racing and Grauer Geist with Ullman Sails took first and Snappy Tom with Ullman Sails took second. 
It was a great event and should be on every northwest sailors schedules for next year.  Corinthian Yacht Club did a great job getting 11 races off in the Melges 24’s.