In 20 years of banging around the buoys at Marblehead Race Week, Sam Altreuter has won and lost his share of races, and at this year’s Sperry Top-Sider Marblehead NOOD regatta, he won racked up two more in the Sonar division to win his class and the regatta’s overall title. Thanking his all-family crew, he accepted the glass pitcher and his invitation to the Caribbean NOOD championship and asked, “So, how does it all work.”

Tim Wilkes| |Sam Altreuter’s team on Resonance won its Sonar class and the overall title at the Sperry Top-Sider Marblehead NOOD.|

Pretty simple. Sam will join eight other overall NOOD winners in the British Virgin Islands in November in Sunsail charterboats to represent Marblehead and get a racer’s tour of the islands.

Altreuter started off this truncated two-day regatta by winning the first race on Saturday and maintained his composure in the day’s trying conditions, posting a fourth and then another win to give himself a comfortable margin going into Sunday’s racing. With a sixth in the first race, however, his lead dwindled as perennial class champion Bill Lynn came back onto form with a second. Lynn took the second race to another bite out of Altreuter’s lead, but in the last, Altreuter’s fourth to Lynn’s second was enough to give him the series by a single point.

We’ll get the inside scoop from Altreuter shortly.

Saturday, July 25

No Complaints Here

Results, click here.

After Friday’s blowout at the Sperry Top-Sider Marblehead NOOD it was business as usual off Marblehead Neck today with everyone getting in three races. The first one was sailed in light southerly full of holes and shifts and as the day wore on the breeze cranked up to a smooth 10 knots. The sun was shining, crews were hiking, and the current was ripping across the racecourses. Midway through the day we lost count of the number of boats that had drifted into the weather mark after approaching on shy layline. A few even hit it twice in the same rounding.

The first casualty of the day (at least from our vantage point on the photoboat) was Frank McNamara’s J/24 Zot, which lead its fleet with a sizeable gap going into the first weather mark. They nailed the mark, and then in the process of re-rounding it (McNamara later confessed that he was still sailing by the old rules and didn’t realize all he had to do was a penalty turn) coughed up the lead, joined the starboard layline and then jibed into a massive hole.

Those of us on the photo boat figured he’d go from first to last, but he managed an eighth. Not to bad at all.

Tomorrow’s forecast is for 10 to 20 out of the southwest, which should make for a great day and a chance to get in three races, or a least two. I’m jumping into an International One-Design (IOD) for my first time, and even though I swore off keelboats designed before the turn of the century, I’m game for anything.

More to come tomorrow.

July 24

The low pressure system winding its way in tight pinwheel aloft of us here at the Eastern YC on Marblehead Neck (Mass.) is delivering a whole lotta wind and rain.

| |A wind snapshot courtesy of Sailing Weather Services.| The sailors have gathered in anticipation of the race committee’s noontime announcement whether it’s a go or no go. In the harbor conditions don’t look too bad, but a peek around the corner by PRO Peter Reggio and George Brengle came back with a report that it’s looking pretty gnarly outside. The race committee has conveened in the model room to talk it over. We’re standing by to see how this first official day of the Sperry Top-Sider Marblehead NOOD shakes out.

At noon: the official word, “No racing. Done for the day.”

July 23

For Day 1 results, click here.