Greetings race fans,

First, our apologies for some technical difficulties (multiple copies, exclamation points inserted in completely inappropriate places, etc.) with yesterday’s email. The good news is that our sailing today went much more smoothly than sending that email did.

Similar to yesterday, we were postponed ashore for about an hour again today waiting for the wind to fill in. The sea breeze eventually filled in, but was much lighter than normal. The first race was sailed in 5-10 knots of breeze and fairly flat water. After two general recalls we finally got a start off. The pin end was favored and we got a good start about 3 boats up from the pin end. More importantly, we were able to tack immediately and cross most of the fleet. Unlike yesterday, neither side of the beat was heavily favored and playing the shifts and pressure was critical. Our speed wasn’t great, but we were able to use the shifts to work our way to the top of the fleet and rounded in second. An unfortunately timed bad spinnaker set cost us a few boat lengths, but our speed down the run was great and we were able to hold our position. At the leeward gate the Japanese men’s ! team chose to foul us rather than round behind us, and we were forced to make a bad rounding and tack off of a big lift. That incident ended up being incredibly costly since it caused us to miss the first few big shifts of the leg, and half way up the beat we had lost about 8 boats. Fortunately the second half of the beat was equally shifty, so we were able to get back in phase and work our way back up to 6th. The rest of the race was a bit of a parade, and we ended up finishing 6th.

Between races we quickly diagnosed our speed problem and felt pretty confident about our speed going into the next race. The wind was still only 5-10 knots, but the waves had increased a bit as the swell came in. The pin was favored again and we got a great start a few boats up and again tacked and crossed the fleet. Playing the shifts continued to be key and we did a pretty good job of it up the middle-right of the course. At the windward mark it was a race among the women’s teams: the Japanese were leading, followed by the Swedes, with us in third. The two Japanese men’s teams rounded out the top group, and we essentially battled with them for third for the remainder of the race. Despite some more boat handling snafus, we used the shifts up the last windward leg to pass them both and finished the race third.

Overall we felt pretty good about the day. The Swedish women had a great day, eliminating our chances of passing them. But we ended up 6th overall and 2nd in the women’s fleet. Our speed and tactics were good, and the flaws in our race were easy to identify and can be fixed with a little practice. Tomorrow and Friday we will be moving the boat up to San Francisco and practicing in preparation for the North American Championships, which start this weekend. We have hired Pease Glaser, the 2000 Silver medal crew, to coach us for both the North Americans and the Worlds, and we’re confident that a little work with her over the next week will go a long way towards getting us prepared for the Worlds.

Final results from the Nationals can be found at: http://www.scyc.org/Racing/2005/08-470-Nationals/470%20us%20nationalsos.html

Cheers,

Erin & Alice