It is still sunny and 80 degrees. The wind blew a bit harder today 8-12 knots from the Southeast.

There was a general recall and then a black flag start. When the black flag is up, if you go over the start line early you are disqualified. This has the effect of backing people off the line. You can get a real good start if you are confident of your line sight in a black flag start. We had a good line sight but ended up not using it. We started at the pin end of the line with a bias of 10 degrees. Peter Bromby was just to windward of us. He tacked to port to cross the fleet, we followed. About 5 minutes into the race, Bromby/Liljedahl and ourselves had a 100 meter lead on the third place boat.

Ok, so we had an awesome start. That is about where it ended for us. We were noticeably slower than Bromby upwind and in fact we made some errors with our tacktics so we rounded the 1st mark 4th. We then proceeded to go slow downwind and rounded the leeward gate about 10th. Bromby was first followed by the Irish team, then John Vandermullen who is now in second place in the regatta.

We made an adjustment to our rig downwind and went better up the second windward leg going from 10th to third. Then down the run we went slow for some reason, also a tactical mistake and we finished 5th. Kind of frustrating to end on a backwards move. The last few days we have been doing the passing on the last leg.

Anyway, big picture is that we have bettered finishing position each day and are now in 3rd place over all.

John Vandermullen is very fast, especially downwind. He is using a new boat called a “P-Star” built by Mark Pickle of Germany. This boat seems to be real fast. John must be sailing well too but he did go by us downwind like we were in a Snipe.

Peter Bromby and Magnus Liljedahl pretty much have the regatta sewn up as they have a 2,2,1 score line and for the first race they will get the average of race 2-5 for their score.

Two races to go and we have to keep improving. Today was really the day that I could feel the rust of not being in the class for 4 years. When you start, sail for 30 second and then tack and cross the fleet by 100 meters, you should never see anyone. The fact that we got swallowed up by the pack is testament to the rust. As it should be! If that did not happen, the Star class would not be the class that it is. Winning in this class has always meant excellence.

Tomorrow’s forecast is about the same as today; 8-12 knots from the southeast with more sun.

Place	Skipper	Crew	1	2	3	4	5	6	Total
1	Bromby Peter	Liljedahl Magnus	6.0 [AVG]	2.0	2.0	1.0	24.0	1.0	12
2	Mendelblatt Mark	PRADA BRUNO	3.0	23.0	1.0	10.0	3.0	2.0	19
3	Merriman Rick	Sharp Brian	6.0	44.0	7.0	6.0	12.0	8.0	39
4	Marazzi Flavio	Pedersen Petter	65.0 [OCS]	12.0	13.0	3.0	5.0	7.0	40
5	Cayard Paul	Sperry Austin	11.0	10.0	8.0	5.0	11.0	24.0	45
6	Vandermolen Jon	Ewenson Geoff	2.0	16.0	6.0	2.0	20.0	30.0	46
7	Wright Peter	Quist Nathan	13.0	3.0	19.0	13.0	13.0	10.0	52
8	Macdonald Andy	Fatih Brian	65.0 [DNF]	13.0	3.0	11.0	8.0	18.0	53
9	Pickel Marc	Mitchell Steve	5.0	26.0	45.0	8.0	2.0	14.0	55
10	O’Leary Peter	Goodbody Tim	4.0	29.0	17.0	4.0	4.0	65.0 [OCS]	58

Short story. We got 8th moved up to 4th overall. More Later.

The first thing to say is that the weather down here is perfect: 8-12 knots of wind from the Southeast and 80 degrees. It doesn’t get better than this anywhere.

Sailing here at the 82nd edition of the Bacardi Cup marks my return to the Star Class after a four year absence. I am fortunate to have Austin Sperry crewing for me who was the US Olympic crew in the Star Class in Beijing last summer. We are a bit light in terms of weight, so the forecasted light to moderate winds is fine with us.

The 65 Star boats headed out to the race track this morning for a 1200 start. Everyone was scrambling a bit as the time changed last night and robbed everyone of an hour of sleep.

Once out on the track on Biscayne Bay, it was perfect Star weather. The fleet raced a 10 mile, 5 leg, windward/leeward course. There was confusion at the start as the main race committee vessel at the starboard end of the line signaled an individual recall while a committee boat at the port end of the line raced across the bows of the fleet in what appeared to be a general recall. This boat actually raced back across the bows of the fleet a second time. Some competitors went back to the starting area, most stopped sailing, but the main race committee never signaled a general recall and they thought it was a race.

Needless to say, it was more than a bit confusing and the jury is going to decide if we even had a race today.

As for the race, once we realized we were racing, we had a decent day. Without going through all the details, we rounded the first mark about 22nd had a great first run and second windward leg, going fast and the right way to round the second windward mark about 10th.

We went too far into one corner on the second run and lost a few boats and a lot of distance to the leaders. We went ok up the last beat and finished 11th.

All in all, Austin and I thought we were going pretty well which was good news as yesterday, in training, we were not. I read my notes from the 2004 Olympic trials that were sailed on this very course and we made some rather major changes to our mast setup for today. So that is all good.

George Szabo and Rick Peters of San Diego won the race. The Bacardi Cup is an institution in the Star Class. Originally sailing in Havana, it has been raced out of the Coral Reef Yacht Club, in Coconut Grove, since 1958. It is a six race championship. Once five races have been completed, each competitor can discard their worst score.

Tomorrow’s forecast is 8-12 again from the southeast. More sun!