I recently raced my M23 in the 26th annual Rickey Point Sailing Club regatta on Lake Roosevelt in Washington. Racing with a variety of different boats (18 in all) I was again amazed by its windward performance. We raced 4 races on the triangle course on Saturday. With the exception of a poorly timed start on the first race (which we mostly made up for crossing the finish 3rd), in each of the next 3 races we were the first boat around the windward mark and often creating distance from other boats on the final beam reach finishing first. We sailed under the 150 genoa and full main with steady 10 to 15 knot winds. The boat consistently and noticeably pointed and beat to windward better than any other boat racing. On Sunday, we had one 8 mile race down the lake and back. Winds were stronger, about 15 to 20 knots. The first leg was downwind under 150 genoa and main (to keep things simpler we don't do spinnakers and not everyone has them). Downwind, we moved ahead of many boats and arrived at the downwind mark overlapping 2 other lead boats. As we prepared to round the mark, I contemplated putting up the working jib for the 4 mile beat to the finish as I was fairly sure we were going to be overpowered. I decided to try it with the sails we had up rather than lose time with a sail change (also, the wind often tends to slack off later in the morning which might save us having to change sails twice). Initially, we were somewhat overpowered in gusts but were able to keep the genoa sheeted in while easing the main in the gusts. For awhile we consistently had about a 25 degree heal with gusts bringing us to 30 degrees or more (too much for my liking). Again, however, we were able to point higher than other boats and soon were ahead of the pack. The wind did eventually ease to about 15 knots and we crossed the finish first about a half mile or so ahead of the second boat. Believe me, I made my share of mistakes and several times we would lose almost all hull speed on tacks that in one way or another went awry. But the boat performed better than I could have expected. It was a great weekend with great winds on both days. While we don't yet have corrected times from boat handicaps figured yet (our stats guy could not attend this weekend). I'm hopeful that we may have actually won this year. We'll see. By the way, wish I could have made the San Juan trip but life challenges set me too far back this year. Maybe next time. Jeff M-23 Clarity