"Yes, the junior [Bea Newland] and b-day crew, Grace Morning, led to the top mark. We and Mike Mac and Peggy all passed them before the leeward mark. We had a beautiful rounding in front of Mike and then headed to the right side which was paying more (the middle was often dull all regatta long so you had to choose a side). Sue tacked away on a shift and when we headed back right we had gained a pile on them and were well out in front. After rounding well back, Dave Moring tacked at the leeward mark and went left under the spinnaker fleet. He gained by doing this and soon looked like he might now be ahead of us. We tacked across the middle to see if we were still ahead. I could see Dave standing up in the boat and should’ve taken the hint that he was looking for wind before tacking to the right side. Instead of tacking to follow Dave as we crossed ten boat lengths behind, Sue kept on going left and then we started lifting. She was waiting for the knock but it kept on lifting and we realized we were on the outside of the curve in a permanent shift… a tack would head us straight into the fleet backwards, so we held on. Then the wind completely died! Soon the first horn went, and a second, but not a third. Shortened course. 5 min later Moring crossed. And we watched the specks move by as we drifted, painfully, a tack - now moving backwards and the Weirdsmas, Marc and Julie and the junior girls drifted by. Marc and Julie were two feet from the line at time limit… Peggy five feet and us about 15 boat lengths. Mike Mac came up to Sue after, and all he could manage to say was, “Hard luck.” He was befuddled by the wind that week."

Uncle Al's op ed on the TLE and the way it was scored: In October 1972, I sailed my first really windy (25+ knots and shifty) Fireball regatta, the Pumpkin Regatta at the Fanshawe YC in London, ON. The day's high was later broadcast as having been 42ºF. Of 16 Fireballs, only Dave Wallace and I made it past the first windward mark. Dave and super-crew, Dana Seymour, pulled ever further ahead as Erik Yeo and I ran our capsize total up to six by the time we finished. I was shivering so violently when we docked, that it took several attempts before I was able to light my well-earned cigarette. Then we were off to the hospital where my knee that had been badly gashed on the Fireball's sharp chine during one capsize, was duly stitched up. But it was all worth it, since we had hung in to place 2nd while 14 other boats would be DNF. Rage does not begin to do justice to my reaction when I discovered that all the Fireball DNF's had been scored as 3rds. I have never forgotten or forgiven that BS, and my admittedly biased views on TLE scoring follow:

When the RC probably rightly chooses not to abandon a race like race 9 considering the fine efforts by those who won, I feel that one of only two things should happen: 
1. all other boats be scored a full-blown DNF, or, much preferably,
2. RC gets general approval of the competitors prior to the event, to use the TS&CC club race finishing procedure of having an RC boat motor down the course, finishing boats in position X according to the RC's best judgment; judges' decision final. I lean very much towards  approach #2 since this rewards all boats for their efforts rather than just lumping them together as (over-rewarded?) also-rans. And how cute the code would be: FOC for "Finished On Course).