First day of racing
It’s been a few days since the last update.
Yesterday was the first day of the Worlds. The qualifying fleets
were split into 4 groups, which meant the pool of talent was
reasonably thin. Never the less, the very light and shifty winds
made for some interesting racing.
As per the form guide, Paul Brotherton & Mari Sheppard are
leading after winning both of their qualifying races in sub-5-knot
winds. With 50kg Mari trapezing away upwind when everyone else was
sitting in.
Miiko & Miikka are doing well too, the first Finnish boat in
3rd place overall with 2 2nd places.
Silja and I raced reasonably well. We had a 1st and 5th to be
running 4th overall. In the 5 race light-wind qualifying series we
need to minimise the damage Paul can do as much as possible.
Fleets will be re-assigned for the next day, and it looks like the
groups will be pretty sparse for fast boats yet again. The forecast
is for the breeze to slowly build through the week, so on Tuesday
we might have 8 knots.
Our race officer has been a bit ordinary, with a penchant to pick
up the loudspeaker and tell boats what to do. The first of our
races was a 3 lap affair, a pretty big call given it was less than
5 knots and shifting 90 degrees. So the fleet got away and did the
first lap in about 25 minutes, and the next by about 38. But the
race time limit is 45. The race officer moved the top mark closer
to halve the length of the next lap, then proceeded to tell the
boats in front of us what to do. At that stage we were in 3rd, the
two boats ahead didn’t really know where to go, so the officer
picks up the loudspeaker and starts telling them to go back upwind.
Talk about outside assistance.
Lucky for him and the boats ahead, the leader made the finish line
in 46 minutes 30 seconds… and the race was abandoned.
But the Paul situation has progressed again since the last update.
By the end of the Nationals (which he won, and we came 3rd) he was
actually talking to us. We even had a conversation at the bar
before the presentation. So that’s a plus, at least he isn’t
avoiding us completely on shore, or dumping on us all the time on
the water…. for now.
But he’s making friends with the Americans. Threatening to protest
Cameron & Matt who sailed downwind to their course as he was
racing downwind to his 2nd race win. The heated conversation didn’t
help Anglo-American relations.
And that’s about all for now.
