Just after 5 a.m. today, I was standing outside my apartment in Providence, R.I., waiting for my skipper, Bill Porter, to swing down my street with the J/22 in tow.

Now it's 9 p.m., and I'm sitting in a hotel room in Buffalo, where we spent a breezy afternoon at the Buffalo YC making last-minute preparations for the J/22 North American Championship, which kicks off tomorrow with a practice race.

At the end of our Jamestown YC PHRF race on Tuesday, the wind died. The outgoing tide began pushing the fleet backwards, into the nearby mooring field. Several competitors had to fend off, and as I was doing so, I said to myself, "Gee, we'd be a lot better off if we just held on." (Actually, I didn't say, "Gee." I must have picked that up from Scooby Doo or something.)

Whoever said two heads are better than one hasn’t called tactics in a light, shifty, and dying breeze. There are times when a lot of input can be helpful: someone to watch the breeze, someone to track the competition, someone to report on relative boatspeed. Then there are times when what the tactician really needs is for everyone to keep their thoughts to themselves and let him do his job.

What did I learn from last night's PHRF race on Narragansett Bay? Not sure yet. It was one of those light, shifty evenings that torture the fleet with upheavals of Biblical proportions. 

We were first. We were last. We followed a vein of wind to the left, only to get passed by boats from the right. At times, we were quick to respond to the shifts. Other times, we sat in a hole watching boats pass on either side. In the end, we wound up mid fleet, not sure whether to be thankful we weren't last, or disappointed we weren't first.