Race Day 1

The day started badly and ended up costing $5K. I woke up to the uncomfortable feeling of stomach flu. That was at 03:00 so the rest of my night wasn’t any good. I layed around in bed until 11:00 then headed down to the boats.

Phil had gotten everything ready so we left the dock at 12:00 after I did an interview for local TV that I had promised to do.

We got out to the race-course pretty early and tuned a bit with George Szabo. We were going well in the 8-10 knots of wind. The forecast was for the wind to come up to 20 knots from the north east by late afternoon. The north east is a tough wind direction as it is coming off the land.

A large rain squall came through the race course around 14:00 which is start time. Then the wind went real light and shifted 70 degrees right. The bottom line is that we sailed around out there until 1600 before we got a start off.

When we did finally start, the wind was 15 knots from 040. We did not have a great start and had to tack a few times to get a clear lane. When we did we found ourselves with Bromby and Grael. We went up the windward leg near them and got around the top mark about 8th.

Not far after rounding we gybed onto port. The wind was increasing and a bit gusty. We got hit by a gust and were not in the right positions with our bodies. The boat rolled over to wind ward, the pole dug into the water, and our favorite rig snapped in half. We also destroyed the main and jib.

We got back to the dock, put “old faithful” together.that is the rig we used most of the trials as we were saving the rig that broke today.and put it back in the boat and got the boat back to its mooring. All the boats stay in the water here during the regatta.

I am not sure what the results were but it looked like Freddy Loof (SWE), Mark Mansfield (IRL) and Ian Percy (GBR) were up in the top. Mark Reynolds and Steve Erickson got around the top mark about 5th so they looks in good shape. Poor George Szabo lost his crew overboard and had to reitre.

I am back at the hotel, feeling a little better, physically. I will try to eat some dinner and go to bed right after. It is already 20:00.

I tried to send some more photos last night but at connection speed of 52K it was going to take 20 minutes.

Obviously, it will be hard for us to win this won with our throw out already used. But we will give it all we have and see where the chips fall next

Sunday.

Paul Cayard