Greetings Race Fans,

Tomorrow is the first day of the 5-day Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta, which is the final ranking event for the 2006 US Sailing Team. We are currently leading in the ranking system, but we need to finish in front of the second place team (Clark/Mergenthaler) to earn the first place ranking for the remainder of the year. The regatta will use the new Olympic format in which the top 10 boats sail a final ‘medal race’ (scheduled for Friday) that is weighted twice as heavily as other races and cannot be used as your dropped score. The medal race also uses on-the-water umpires, which always has the potential to make things interesting! We’re looking forward to the opportunity to start learning how the new system will impact our strategy and decision making in the final race of a series.

We went out for a great practice session today with US Sailing Team Coach Skip Whyte and several other top US boats. We had 10-15 knots of wind with warm water and air temperatures, which made for some great boat handling and speed practice. We used our new main sail and spent a good bit of time testing different settings to determine their effect on our speed and height relative to other boats. Overall today we felt that our speed was very good and tactics remained our primary strength in the practice races.

The forecast for tomorrow is for similar conditions, but with slightly less wind velocity. Because of the large number of 470s here, the men and women will be sailing separately and the women’s fleet will have about 17 boats. Our first race is scheduled for 11:30 am and we have two races scheduled. You can find results online at http://www.ussailing.org/olympics/rolexmiamiocr/results/470_06.asp.

Cheers,
Erin and Alice