Audi Med Cup – Alicante – Race Day 1

Onboard Desafio we had an average day today. The conditions were very light winds, with smooth seas and partly sunny skies. The wind was 7-9 knots from 135 for the two races.

We finished the day with a 9th and 6th, so we are in 8th place overall. The big winner of the day was Tau (this former world champion “Artemis” is now owned by a Spanish team). Second for the day was Mutua Madrilena with Vasco Vascotto who did not practice at all during the last three days, as the top of their mast was being repaired having broken last Saturday. The racing is very competitive as you can see from the scores at www.medcup.org

We (I) had a bad start in the first race and we had to tack onto port shortly before the starting gun and pass behind most of the fleet. We managed to dig our way out of there and round the top mark about 12th and finish 9th. John Cutler our tactician did a nice job there. In the second race, we had a good start but got a bit caught in the middle and went around the whole course pretty much in 6th.

When we got back to shore, Caxia Galicia informed us they were protesting us for an incident at the first windward mark. I won’t go into the details but obviously we did not feel there was an incident. I hate protests in general and this one seemed unnecessary to me from the get go. The other party was intent so we went through the hearing for 1.5 hours of pain. In the end, the protest was dismissed and off we went to our performance debrief to do something constructive to try to improve for tomorrow.

I am making this one short as I am late for the team dinner.

Two more windward/leeward races tomorrow.