Today was the first day of the Castellón, TP-52 Regatta. This is the second regatta of the Mediterranean Season. It was a perfect day for sailing with winds of 10-13 knots from 080. We had three races today.

Onboard Atalanti/Lexus, we have a very good crew but we did not manage to do very well today. Russell Coutts is our helmsman and I am the tactician. Our best race was the first one in which we got 7th. From there we went downhill getting to 12ths. It looked like a combination of things, not very good starts, not very fast and not going the right way. This fleet is very competitive and tough so if you get that many things wrong you will not do very well.

The winners were a boat called Platoon in the first race, Bribon in the second and Caixia Galicia in the last race. The overall leader is a boat called Ono with 14 points, second is Warpath which is a US boat with Team New Zealand as the crew, and third is Mean Machine, a Dutch boat with my firend Dirk De Ridder onboard. We are in 9th over all with 31 points. Still a lot of racing left and if we can get out act straightened out we can move up the leader board. There were plenty of protests and some boats had damage.

Tomorrow there will be two windward/leeward races, like today, then Friday there will be a coastal race, probably 20-30 miles long, and then one more windward/leeward race on Saturday. There is no discard in this series.

Paul Cayard