East Coasts at Block Island: 3 down 2 to go

Block Island Race Week mid-point: In the J/105 Class, Paul Beaudin’s loulou posted a 1-5-1 to leapfrog from second into first. Loulou now has the low score of 20 points and leads previous leader James MacDonald’s Distant Passion by 3 points. Bruce Stone’s Arbitrage is third with 29 points, while two-time reigning champion Damian Emery’s Eclipse is fourth with 31 points. For Beaudin, Wednesday was about getting his new crew members in sync and improving his starts. “We had great speed all day. In fact, we’ve had great speed all week,” said Beaudin. “We have a couple of new people on the boat, and after a couple of days we’re working very well together. I’ve been over early quite a bit this week, but (Wednesday) we got relatively clean starts. That, combined with really good boatspeed has helped drastically.”