Athens Training

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.

Paul Cayard