Day 6

Sailing is a beautifully sport some days. Today was one for us. We got a third and moved ourselves up into 8th over all.

We were scheduled to start at 1500 after the Tornados but at 1500 the Tornados still had not raced. Nada Vento on the Charlie course today and very little wind anywhere else. The Levante was dying out and the sea breeze was slow to fill in. We then got assigned to race on course Delta, the Yngling course as they had just one race today and were finished at 1400. Hannah Sweat, Melissa Purdy(Tiburon, CA), and Joan Touchette won the Yngling class for the USA. Congratulations to them for a great summer; Silver in Athens and Gold in Cadiz.

We got out to the course first and sailed quite a bit, got the rig readjusted for light air and at 1630 we had a start in 7 knots of wind from 215. We had a nice start and immediately started gaining on those around us. The boat was perfectly set up and in the grove. We wanted to go left as in the tune up, we had seen more pressure on the left, but so had everyone else. So it was a foot race to the left and we were going fast.

Sure enough the left was good and we rounded the top mark 6th. From there we battled the whole day with a Peter Bromby from Bermuda. He was ahead of us and kept tacking on us trying to push us back. The wind did not change much and it was a bit of a one-way track with the left side being favored up and down wind.

The wind remained light, 7-8 knots the whole race and on the third beat, Bromby and us both passed the Spanish. Across the line, Bromby was 3rd but we later found out he was OCS (over early at the start) so we finished third which moves us into 8th place overall. While 8th isn’t setting the world on fire, it is a move up and if we are in the top 8 at the World Championship we qualify for Operation Gold money from the USOC. This can be a big boost to our budget and my sponsor (my wife) would be happy.

In the rest of the fleet, Percy had a bad race finishing 19th, which put him in 3rd over all. Xavier Rohart, the French sailor, finished second and locked up the series as there can only be one race tomorrow. Loof (SWE) won the race and moved into second.

Tomorrow there can only be one race per the sailing instructions and it must start before 16:00. The forecast is very light wind in the early and middle of the day with a sea breeze filling in around 1600. We will see.

All in all, we have been sailing at the top of the fleet the last two days, which is good in the big picture. Our speed has been good in the variety of conditions and I am very pleased with our new boat.

I may not have time to write the report tomorrow as I am on a 20:30 flight out of here Sunday night. Keep your figures crossed for tomorrow.

Paul Cayard