We actually weren't late enough, we planned on being 20 secs or so late. Thankfully we were able to thread the needle as that shit was white knuckle for a minute. Everyone knew this start was gonna be a car crash at the boat end because of wind direction. We had several 70 footers in the class, plus two 52s, and we were sticking with the J2 to get height off the line for awhile before launching the A0. So the plan was sag late and come of the line clear behind as those guys would roll us regardless. About 2 minutes to go it looked like those guys were dicking each other at the leeward end so we kind of powered up. Those guys ended up getting down the line a bit further than it seemed like they would and made it a bit hairy. I knew the HH42 was going to bear off though, he had his zero teed up, the 52 was just holding him up. Once the gun went off they were all heading down. Still maybe cleared the outboards by a couple feet at 10 knots lol.
My buddy shooting the video said he told them they should have made the pin the windward end of the line, that would have been a lot safer, you could bail out if you didn't make it. I bet they at least put a little red ball out as a keep off next time though...