Athens Training

No gym today…the gym doesn’t open until 12:00 on sundays. We headed down to the boat at 0900 and rigged up our new mast. Mark and I measured everything carefully. It was a nice strong Meltemi today so we sailed with the old rig and left the dock at 11:00 with both boats and the tender. We sailed downwind away from land for about 1.5 hours. That was good as we have to work on my downwind technique. Andy Lovell was a very good laser sailor, 2nd in the 1996 US Olympic Trials, and he is fast down wind.

Then it took us 2.5 hours to sail back from there. We were very near the island that is out in front of Athens. Can’t remember the name but it is big. So we tested upwind all the way, swapping sides, windward to leward positions every ten minutes to equalize for any anomalies. That was a workout but very good testing. The wind is steadier out I the middle of the gulf on a Meltemi day. Near the land it is very shifty. As we got back towards Athens, Freddy, the dutch and Italians were out racing but we decided to come in, save the sails we were testing and swap to the new rig.

Austin hoisted up the tender and scrubbed the bottom and drained our all the water. Reynolds, Andy and I did a final check of the rig and Phil put some new running backstays on. We are slowly replacing everything on the boat during this period so everything will be new and dependable for the Games.

We have a good team here, a good set up with the two boats and the tender. We are putting in long days but it will pay off.