Aldo Alessio Perpetual Regatta
 

We began the month of August by racing in the StFYC Aldo Alessio Perpetual Trophy Regatta.  In this event we won our class in
2003 and were second last year.  We couldn’t participate in 2004 as we were wrapping up the Waikiki Offshores during this timeslot. 
We had high hopes for the 2006 regatta, but finished the three-day, four-race series in 6^th place (out of 13).  Scorpio simply never
had the pace we’d enjoyed during 2005. 

Since putting her back together in May, we never felt we had the mast in the right place.  This was certainly true during the Aldo,
where during our practice session on 7/29, the new carbon main looked so bad, we put it away and sailed with our 2002 main, which
at that time already had 152 hours of use.  Our crew work was good, but managed mediocre finishes of 5, 4, 6, 5 to lose a tiebreaker
with the well-sailed Sydney 38, Double Trouble.  Tupelo Honey, an Elan 40 won the event with impressive scores of 2, 1, 1, 1.  With
North Sails representative Pete McCormick aboard, Tupelo Honey showed speed none of us had seen in previous years.

After Sunday’s final race, we adjusted our headstay length, rearranged the mast partner blocks, loaded up the new main, and went our
for a short practice session with Seadon Wijsen, our North Sails representative.  We found that extending the headstay by an inch and
shifting one or two partner blocks from the aft to the forward side of the mast, made a huge difference and the main suddenly looked
good.  It blew well over 20 knots during this one hour sail test, and we came back to the dock feeling relatively confident that we’d
possibly solved our speed problems.