Thanks for the advice everyone. We ended up with a forecast of 4'-6' seas and 15kts-20kts wind, with a forecast shift of 90 degrees over night.

If the seas were not too bad, the higher wind offshore looked very appealing, so we ended up heading offshore planning to tack back in if things were too rough.

The boat seemed to be handling everything fine so we stayed on that tack, cracking of a bit for speed when the shift came. The crew mostly handled things well (a bit of time was spent on the leeward lifelines, including yours truly...)

The 90 degree shift came just as expected bringing us back inshore on the same tack!

A lot of people in our fleet stayed inshore and the shift really messed them up, so we were able to carry the day!

http://www.charlestonoceanracing.org/C2G/tabid/355/Default.aspx

[Linked Image]

Granted our competition was all larger spinaker-equipped cruisers, there were 6 of them and we were more than happy with the result.

thanks again - Dan