89th Bacardi Cup

Coconut Grove

Another perfect day for sailing today on Biscayne Bay with 12 knots of wind to from the southeast and sunshine.

The final race was for all the marbles.  Robert Stanjeck with Fritjof Kleen (GER) up front and Diego Negri with Sergio Lambertenghi (ITA) were tied and no one else could beat either of them. Augie Diaz was in third and I woke up to find out I was in fifth place after going to bed in fourth place.  Last night, the Jury had awarded Torben Greal redress after he was hit by a give way boat in race 5.  He was in 10th place at the time and the jury awarded him 4th place for the race.  It  was a bit hard to comprehend.  Anyway,  we beat him today so that wasn’t an issue for us.

After our customary one general recall, the race committee put up the Black Flag. The Germans shot off the line and were never headed.  The led wire to wire.  The Italian’s were in the top four at the first mark and worked their way up to second by the end of the race.

Brian and I tried a loser rig today and it wasn’t good.  We had mediocre speed upwind and were in 20th after the first lap of the race. We hit a nice shift on the right side up the second beat to round the top mark the second time around 12th.  By the end of the race we had moved up to 10h with Torben and Guilherme in 13th.  Augie Diaz and Bruno Prada finished 6th in todays race so the remained comfortable in third for the series.

For complete results go to www.yachtscoring.com

Tomorrow I am headed to St. Barths for the Bucket where I will rejoin the Rosehearty Team where I serve as tactician.  We had a successful year last year on Rosehearty, being top Perini at St. Barts and winning the Perini Cup in Porto Cervo in September.  My America’s Cup team mate from 2003, Peter Holmberg will be joining us as helmsman.  I always enjoy sailing with Pete.

I’ll will start back up with the reports on Friday.

Paul