Monaco, 12 Februari, 2010
It was a nice day! 9 am we left the dock for a beautiful day of sailing in the bay of Monaco. We docked out early so we could do a little bit of training.
The weather forecast for today showed some cold, but nice weather and light winds. It started however with a strong fluky offshore wind just like we saw yesterday. But just minutes before the first starting sequence of the day got started the wind dropped away completely and left us drifting on the water with like 3 knots of breeze left. We got a bit too late on the first start due to that sudden wind drop but fortunately the race got kicked out because the wind direction wasn’t stable enough.
We had to wait for 1 hour and move further offshore before the wind settled a bit and the committee was able to put in another course. The wind moved to the left like predicted and was about 4-6 knots in strength, very low and difficult to keep the boat up to speed.
The start was OK on the left side of the starting line and we were aiming for the left side of the course to sail our first upwind leg. We got up 4th at the first top mark and things didn’t change anymore during this race.
Second race got off soon after the first race ended. We got a nice start at the pin-end right on time but bit too slow. Left side was again favored but the wind was even less than the first race and very, very shifty on our way up to the mark. We’re able to manage the wind in a right way and got some nice boat speed and pointing which resulted in a third place at the first upwind mark just behind Dunkerque and Olympic (TPM COYH). Downwind all the boats stayed in the same lane with no tactical opportunities to pass them. After the downwind mark we stayed too long behind Olympic and lost some distance of the boats behind us. The major fuck-up off the day happened at the last spreader mark. With the spinnaker up and lots of boats around us we hit the spreader mark and had to turn a 360. Pretty shitty with 4 knots of wind left and after this we were at the back of the fleet. We worked hard during the last downwind leg, closing the distance to our rivals but it wasn’t enough to catch them, resulting in a disappointing 6th place.
The committee decided that this was it and sent us back to the port. It was a good day. We made good improvements in our communication and boat speed so we’re quite happy about that. Tomorrow the weather forecast promises us again light winds from westerly direction. Focus will be on acceleration, boat speed and communication. We’ll see what it brings; we’re looking forward to it!
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