Marseille, 22 July 2010
Dear readers, team Mummaduck has taken over the yellow sweater of the Tour de France a la Voile in the amateur ranking. But in this race the sweater is 90m2 and blue! Like Remond described yesterday we did not have a good start in the Mediterranean. The first day of inshore racing at Port Camarque ended in disappointment… With a 12, 17 and 21 the team was not happy at all. We lost points to Saint Malo and Ville de Geneve.
After a good chat the morning after the team had a mission: closing the gap with Ville de Geneve and Saint Malo during the next three days. The second day inshores in Port Camarque started good with a 4th place, after that the team achieved a 5th place in the offshore to Marseille.
Three inshores races were sailed today. The day started with a good breeze of 15 knots. The bay of Marseille is a beautiful, but a challenging place to sail. The first race we won the pin end and went to the left of the course. Rounding the topmark in 2nd position just behind Brunel. Downwind we worked hard. We choose the left downwind mark going into the next beat. We enjoyed a good shift and came first at the second topmark. We kept this position until the end of the race. Our third win this Tour!
The wind was increased to 18 knots as we started the next race. Working hard and defending our position delivered a 6th place. Again the opponents were behind us. The third race was far from briljant. We struggled with boats at the back of the fleet tacking on our nose and luffing to Reykjavik during the downwind legs. We finished 18th.
So back to the mission the team had. Closing the gap with Saint Malo and Ville de Geneve. Actually we did better than that. We now are the guys to beat in Amateur class. Either we like it or not. But as you can read things change fast in the Tour de France a la Voile. We are in 9th position in general ranking.
Some action from today can be found here.
Stay tuned,
Rob
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