Day 1

Too much wind! We had the “Levante” wind today blowing 25-30 knots so no racing for Stars. The girls in the Yngling class raced though, so the big macho guys from the Star class did not look to flash.

The “Levante” is akin to the Meltemi of Athens. It is a gradient wind created by a high pressure to the north and a low over Morocco . This creates an easterly gradient that can be as strong as 50 knots or light enough to get over powered by the “sea breeze” which is what happened yesterday.

Yesterday, after waiting for the land to heat up so the sea breeze could overpower the Levante, we had the practice race mat 15:30 in a sea breeze of 7-9 knots. The format here is to divided the fleet into 2 groups. Each day the division is redone according to the scores of the previous days. It is a complicated system but the idea is to race in smaller fleets..45-50 boats per fleet. After 6 races, the top half will race in the gold fleet for the championship. The bottom half will race in the Silver fleet. All your races count for the total score except one throw out which starts factoring into the scores after 6 races are completed.

In yesterdays race we finished fourth which wasn’t bad considering we were 25 th at the first mark. The wind shifted 90 left on the first beat and we went right early.

This morning we changed masts to put our heavy air rig in. That would have been good for today and should still be good for tomorrow. The forecast for tomorrow is 16-22 knots. 3 races are scheduled for tomorrow so you have to be careful not to have any major issue, like breaking the rig, in the first or second race. You would be out of the regatta if that happened.

So for tonight it is the gym, early dinner and big sleep. 3 races in 22 knots will be a work out!