Steve David presents another video in our “You are There” series:

This was the start of the final for the Oryx Cup. It was pretty rough and windy with white caps.
At 15 seconds in the 5 is in lane one at the one minute score up buoy. The 1 (me) is outside and accelerating. At the 25 second mark I move to lane 1 and the 5 moves over to lane 2.

The call: I was penalized a lap for not having 5 boat lengths on the 5 before coming over. Remember it’s 5 boat lengths prior to the start, and 7 boat lengths after the start.

The takeaway(s) #1 I had previous issues with this particular ref and asked to see the video and how he judged it was not 5 boat lengths. It was at this point I thought “If I ever ran this sport I’d ask our refs to only make calls when it’s clearly evident there is an infraction.”
Takeaway #2. During the previous heats I had won from the outside, and should have simply made a good start from lane 2 and maybe would have won the race. It’s imperative that a driver set aside the singular desire to grab lane 1 and instead run a strategic race with the primary focus on winning.
Takeaway #3. Jimmy won this race and at the end of the day, we race to win.