TP52 Pre-Worlds
Lot of new words up there at the top. The TP 52 fleet is racing in the Trofeo Cesar Manrique here in Lanzarote for three days as a tune up for the TP 52 World Championship which will start on Monday.
Lanzarote is in the Canary Islands, in fact, I believe it is the Eastern most island. The conditions are fairly tropical and throughout most of the summer the trade winds off the Southeastern side of the Azores are in place and this is a great place to sail or windsurf, kite-surf etc. Usually, it is fairly breezy with very consistent winds.
Today was our first day sailing here onboard El Desafio and it was the first day of racing in the Trofeo Cesar Manrique. There are a couple of other events going here at the moment, the ORC IMS 670 World Championship, the GP 42 Circuit and then the TP 52s are here as well. I mean, it must be the center of the sailing universe this week!
Getting on with it, El Desafio had its best day of racing this year. We had a 1,4,1 for 6 points and a 5 point lead over 2nd place Platoon of Germany. The conditions were 15-18 knots but rather shifty, sometimes from 030 and sometimes from 070. There was a convergence line of cloud directly over the race course and depending on which way the line swung, you had either the right handed wind or the left. This line of cloud was streaming off of a large volcano at the North end of the island and oscillating like a garden hose turned on with no nozzle on it. Well, not quite that violent but you get what I mean.
If it stays like this is will make for stressful days for the tacticians.
We obviously had some good luck today and got all systems functioning well at the same time. We have had moments of excellence this year but have never managed to string several days together to win a regatta. So we are hoping to put it all together here. Of course, it is next week that counts not this week.
A couple of our most formidable foes were not on the course today including Quantum and Artemis. They are here but training on their own. So 10 of the TP 52s did battle today and the results can be found at www.trofeopuertocalero.com/ultimanoticia.php
Forecast for tomorrow is similar to today. Temperature 25C, winds 15-18 knots from the NE.
