Bacardi Cup

Coconut Grove

Today was Day 2 of the 88th Bacardi Cup and all the forecasts were predicting big breeze-20 knots.  It didn’t materialize.  That’s why they call it a forecast and not a factcast.

We had a much shorter day on the water which was appreciated by all. I was in bed at 8:15 last night!  After a 20 minute delay to get the line set, we had just one general recall today and then got race 2 underway in 16 knots from the East and choppy seas.

Brian and I had a decent start about 2/3rds of the way to the left end of the line and held starboard for about 10 minutes.  Our speed was good and we were immediately up amongst the leaders.  We rounded the first mark 4th and headed downwind.  When we gybed to port it seemed like everyone behind us did as well.  We were immediately set up underneath (in the wind shadow) of a 15 boat pack.  This is not good when you need wind to push your boat.

Needless to say we had a stressful run and ended up losing quite a bit of ground.  We rounded the gate at the bottom of leg 2 about 13th.

With good speed up wind and a much better second downwind run and we finished the race in 5th.

Today was Italia Day with Diego Negri and Sergio Lambertenghi taking the win.  They had very good speed upwind and down wind.  They were second at the first mark but passed yesterdays winners, the German team of Stank/Kleen, on the first downwind leg.  The Italians stretched out to a big lead, an obvious indication of speed.

For a while Torben Greal and Guilherme Almeida moved into second place but the Germans recaptured second up the last windward leg.

Augie Diaz and Bruno Prada are going very fast in their new Folli which just arrived Friday.  They got passed Torben as well to finish third, Grael 4th and Brian and I in 5th.

Missing from the top group today was Lars Grael (Torben’s younger brother and current World Champion) who finished, an uncharacteristic, 25th.

After two races the leaderboard is: 1)Stanjek/Kleen-3 points,  2) Negri/Lambertenghi-7,  3)Diaz/Prada 8,   4) Vessella/Trinter-12,  5) Cayard/Fatih-13.

It’s a little early for us to be looking at the scores….lots of racing to go.

I have not been accredited by the Bacardi Cup organization so no photos.  I will work on that some more tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow’s forecast is for strong winds; 20-25 knots.  If this materializes, it would be on the edge of “raceable” and the race committee would have to decide weather to send us out of postpone racing to Thursday.

For complete results go to www.yachtscoring.com

Paul