A good day today. We got out of the harbor at 1230 and did some light air gybing practice on the way down to our race course area, course “D”. It was 5-6 knots and there is a very different technique for gybing a star in under 6 knots compared to the technique in 10 knots. So that was useful while we waited for Freddy to get out there.

Once Freddy got there, we did some upwind speed tests. We were going about the same today which was a slight improvement over yesterday. We used a different mainsail and made a change to how we trim the jib as well. Seems like it worked.

In the racing Freddy Loof (SWE) won two and we won one. We had good speed up and downwind. Torben Grael (BRA) and Alex Hagen (GER) were also out there.

We had to come in early…1600..as I had a commitment to NBC to do some radio interviews live in the USA.

We received two new masts at 1830 and rigged one up and stuck it in the boat at 2100. We will sail with that tomorrow as I want to have two new masts ready for the games. The mast we had been using this week is the old warhorse…rig number one. The rig we put in is rig number 6.

Tomorrow my family arrives so that will be nice for me. Tomorrow will be our last sailing day until next Thursday…6 days off. I am looking forward to a break of that length and getting out of town for 5 days. I think we are ready to go so now it is about getting the mid set. We have put a lot of time in on the water in the month since we arrived…probably more than any other team. While we needed it, we have to watch out for burn out.

Gym again this morning for Phil and I. I then had some physio therapy from our USOC physio, Scott Weiss. We put the boat in around 1230 and left the dock at 1300.

A very strange day on the water. The wind was the most erratic of the month that we have been here. There were “helicopter” puffs touching down randomly and wind shifts of up to 50 degrees prior to 1600 today. This made for untestable conditions.

We had been training with Torben Grael (BRA) but he went in and we were following shortly behind. We had gone to the 470 course to get Skip Whyte to take a few photos of our rig tune. On our way in, a nice seabreeze filled in suddenly from 165 and we tuned with Freddy Loof (SWE) and Alex Hagen (GER) for about 1 hour in 8-10 knots…very nice sailing.

Tomorrow we are expecting two new masts to arrive from Italy. I want to rig up one of these asap and sail with it as it will be our back up for the games. Hopefully the truck comes early and we can get out on the water with it tomorrow. We are told that the truck will come between 0900 and 1700 and that we have to be there to receive them.

My family is coming down here on Thursday and we are taking off for about 5 days.

Short and sweet today. Phil took Austin to the airport at 0600. Then Phil and I went to the gym at 0900-11:00. The wind was light in the am through 1400 so we did some chores. I went to a Travel agent to try to figure out what Island to go to to rest for a few days and the store to restock after the weekend. Phil is moving into his apartment.

We sailed from 1430-1700 with Freddy Loof, Torben Grael (BRA) and Alex Hagen (GER). No racing, just some line ups. We had our old mast in and some older sails on. We were going ok but I want to make some adjustments for tomorrow. Our new rigs should arrive Wednesday or Thursday and we will have to get one of them on line asap as our back up for the Games.

Meg Gaillard our Europe sailor, our men’s 470 Paul Forester and Kevin Burnham were also out sailing today. The tornado guys were gluing their boat together…apparently they epoxy the cross beams to the hulls for important regattas. Our 49er guys Tim Wadlow and Pete Spaulding rigged up their boat. Kevin Hall, our Finn sailor just dropped his boat and coach boat off. Tomorrow they draw for the Lasers whish is the only class where the boats are supplied by the organizing authority. Mark Mendleblatt is our Laser sailor and he finished second that this years world championship. He is a good golfer too as you know from what I wrote yesterday.

It is so nice to be sailing out of the venue. We literally walked across the street to get back to the apartment.; 10 minutes max.

Phil and Chrissy came over and we Que-d up some yard bird and made some Fusili Napolitana and a salad.

Tomorrow will be a bigger day sailing and probably some racing.

A little update on the past four days.

Thursday morning we went for team golf. We went with Mark Medleblatt the USA Laser representative. He has actually been here so long he is a member of the golf Club and he is pretty good. He won easily shooting 40 for 9. The rest of us, Phil me and Austin were in the 50’s and Andy is pretty new at golf. The guys went down to pack up the boat after that and I went to the airport for a short one day trip. Even though I was going through airports and hassling with travel it was pretty relaxing compared to what we have been doing. Mainly being in airconditoning all day rather than heat all day was a relief.

Friday, Phil, Austin and Andy finished up the pack up of the two Stars and the tender and Phil and I met up in the Athlete’s Village with the rest of the US Olympic Sailing Team around 2030 for dinner. We walked around the village a bit after wards. We saw the gym’s, the track, the pools, all pretty nice training facilities within the Athelete’s village. We then caught a bus to the “International Zone” an area with an Internet Caf

Boot Camp closed today. 21 days of sailing in 23 days. We are a bit tired. Four days off now…no sailing that is. I have to go for a short trip to Europe and Phil and Austin and Andy are packing up the boats so we can move into the venue on Sunday. Saturday is US Olympic Committee “processing”.

Today was another good day for the Red, white and blue racing team. Two bullets and a third. We are pretty happy with where we are at in our preparation so a perfect time to take a break.

I feel that we have made a lot of progress in the 23 days. No that we are much better than the trials but we somehow acquired a lot of rust in the month off before we came here. So we got rid of the rust, checked all our sails, got very fit by sailing everyday and going to the gym four days a week before sailing.

Today after sailing we had a team Go Cart session. Pretty fun. The Carts were pretty fast. Tomorrow morning we are have a team golf session.

All is good for now. I may be a bit sporadic on the reports over the next few days as things wont be very regular. Maybe you need a break too.