Quantum Key West Race Week-Day 4

Tim Wilkes Photo

January 22, 2015, 18:00 EST

Key West

The short story is we did not have a good day.

We finished 3rd in both races today. In the first race, we lost by 15 seconds and in the second race by just one second!

Nothing remarkable happened in the races.  Just a steady progression.  The fact that Bella Mente and Shockwave are fairly close in rating is helping Numbers.  For example, in the second race today, we on Shockwave were just on the heels of Bella Mente up the second windward leg.  Being the higher rating and faster boat, Bella was worried about not getting their 40 seconds of time on us. So they began tacking on us at every opportunity.  This cost the both of us easily 15 seconds relative to Numbers who was just sailing along undisturbed, 3 minutes behind. Then we lost second place to Numbers by 1 second.

I am frustrated at our performance here this week and I take the responsibility personally. We don’t have a chance to win this regatta at this point.  So all we can do is go out and have the best day we can tomorrow and try to leave the event on an up note.

Numbers and Bella Mente are tied on 15 points. They will have a good battle, albeit they won’t see each other most of the day.  We have 19 points. The forecast is for 15-17 knots so it should be some fast sailing on these 72 footers.

The owner of Shockwave, George Sakellaris, is a great guy. Self made man, immigrant from Greece, university education in the USA, engineer, very perceptive, a man who obviously loves sailing.  I have enjoyed meeting him and hanging out with him this week.

For complete results go to: http://www.yachtscoring.com.

Paul