Athens Training

Another great day today. Seabreeze filled a bit earlier and provided some great testing conditions of 8-12 knots and pretty steady. We tested a couple of jibs and mains. Andy and Austin are doing a great job of being the base line boat. It is not easy to do that job and keep your enthusiasm up but they are doing a great job.

We joined the racing today about half way through. We did not have a good couple of races. The wind got turbulent and there were holes and large shift for a hour there right when we raced…a bit unusual for the seabreeze. Freddy Loof won both the races that we participated in and Andy and Austin got a 2-3. our speed was good we just went the wrong way. That is going to happen here. Probably the winner will be the team that can minimize the damage when things go against them because everyone will have there share of bad shifts.

After the others went in we went up wind for another pair of tests, then changed mainsails and sailed four more tests up wind. Then we sailed a long downwind in 10-12 knots will fairly good sized waves. Very good training for finding the grove and keeping the boat surfing. It is amazing how sloppy the wave pattern gets out here in the afternoon. All the ferry traffic I guess. We have made some good improvement in our downwind speed here in these weeks, which was one of our goals.

We got in a 1900, put the boats away and are headed out for dinner tonight. The stores close from 1800 on Saturday until 0900 on Monday. We missed shopping yesterday and our refrigerator doesn’t hold enough food for us for three days.

Tomorrow is Mark’s last day. Phil’s wife Chrissy is coming on Tuesday so his demeanor is going up like a thermometer in Death Valley on a June morning. We will shut down on Friday for a few days. None of us seems to be draggin but still it will be nice to take a break.