Bacardi Cup – Race 5

Another perfect day: 80 degrees, 12-14 knots of wind, sunshine, short chop on Biscayne Bay. 70 Stars on the starting line. It doesn’t get better than this.

Unfortunately, our score could have. We had a decent start but got out to the left of the first windward leg and the right was better once again. 27th at the first mark. Ouch! But that is when we start to kick it into gear. Hoss (Austin) said, “Come on Boss. Wake up Dude! We have got to get this cart in gear.” That is code for; “Hey buddy, we can still catch up a bit.” Every day but one has been the big comeback for us and today was no different. 4 legs and 16 boats passed to finish 11th.

The race was won by Andrew Campbell of San Diego who is a new “kid” in the class. Andrew went to the Georgetown University and sailed lasers in the last Olympic Games for the USA. The scary thing is that I sailed on the same America’s Cup team as his father Bill Campbell in the 1983 Cup! And I had been sailing Star already for 6 years by then. I know, I know….the is just amazing considering I am just 37.

Mark Pickle of Germany led at every rounding of the race only to get ground down by Andrew and on the last leg.

Mark Mendleblatt had a good race to finish third and move himself up into 2nd over all. Peter O’Leary of IRL also had a good race finishing 4th which moves them into 4th. John VanderMollen who was second after yesterday’s race finished 20th and Peter Bromby and Magnus Liljedahl finished 24th! And yes, this was the windiest day of the regatta. So the regatta is not over. We could technically still win!

Not only did we not have a stellar race, but the discard starting being applied today and we have been very consistent through out the series which does not get rewarded in a regatta that allows you to discard your worst race. So every boat ahead of us is discarding a big number; Bromby 24, Mendleblatt 23, VanderMollen 20, O’Leary 29, Meriman 44, Marazzi 65 and we are discarding just 11 points. The good news is that we have sailed pretty well every day and for a four year absence I am very happy. Also, if things go badly tomorrow we wont sink too far as the worst we will score tomorrow is 11 points.

Tomorrow’s start is moved up to 11:00 and the forecast is similar to today. We made some changes to our rig this morning to account for the more wind and I think we went pretty well considering we are very light compared to everyone else.

So we are all set for tomorrow and we can go for it a bit knowing that we have 5 decent scores already.

What the heck, it is time to go for it!

Check the scores at: www.bacardicup.com