Editors Note:  This article was written by Karl Pomeroy several months ago.

What a summer it was!  The opportunity to get back into racing after a 10+ year absence, a chance to teach my 10 year old son about the sport I love and the culmination of winning the Harbor 20 B fleet made for a near perfect summer.

I am first off grateful to all of the wonderful H20 sailors who welcomed my son Cole and I into the fleet.  It all started with a call to Peter Haynes who is simply the best advocate a fleet could ask for.  2 weeks later we owned a H20 and by May we sailed in our first race.

My first reaction was “I forgot how to sail after all these years”.   Well, some great advice and fantastic seminars and then we started to improve.  Cole truly was having fun getting on the boat every night and sailing with Dad!  I think my favorite part of the H20 fleet is from Memorial Day to Labor Day you can race 5 nights a week.  Couple that with the great friends, and wonderful dinners and you have a near perfect summer.

A pleasant additional thing happened we got faster!  I was amazed that every time out we learned something that we were able to build on.  In June I went to the Dave Perry seminar and got some of the best advice I have received in my sailing career and we turned that into our first big win a week later in the Stars and Stripes Regatta.

A bunch more sailing and we reached the important Fall Tune Up, Schock Memorial and Championship Regatta.  In the Fall Tune-Up and Schock Regatta we simply were inconsistent and frankly that had to do with bad starts.  We have all been there but in the H20 I have finally learned my lesson.  Good starts equal good finishes and unfortunately bad starts tend to equal bad finishes.

After a frustrating weekend before the championship we committed ourselves to quality starts and I can tell you in the Championships I felt we had 5 good starts and one bad one.  The bad one was by far our worst race.  If I were to give some advice to a new H20 sailor it would be as follows:

1. Sail the boat a lot in summer races and ask for help!  This group of awesome people wants to assist you in improving.
2. Attend the seminars – I cannot tell you how much of a difference they made in our speed over the summer.
3. Good Starts!  I can’t stress it enough.  You win and lose races on the starting line in a fleet of boats that are very close in speed.
4. Have fun!  Most of all I got to spend the entire year sailing with my son and creating memories I will never forget.

Thanks Harbor 20 fleet #1 for making 2010 one of my best sailing memories ever!

Karl Pomeroy