Dear Friends,

Our last update came to you after the third day of racing when we were in 2nd place overall and top American team. We had three races today: we won the first race by a lot(!), finished 5th in the second, and 10th in the third. Overall, we are in 3rd place and still the top American team! The points are extremely close, and everything will be decided by a medal race tomorrow between the top ten teams where the points count double.

Yesterday, Thursday, was a tough day, as well as a tough day of racing. We'll spare you Thursday's details because the weather dominated everything, but we continued to have great speed upwind. Our losses came downwind and in tactical decision making around marks. A cold front rolled in, the temperature dropped 20 degrees, the wind shifted 120 degrees and increased by 12 knots, all during our racing! We crossed the line in 9th and 8th, after moments of glory in 2nd and 3rd in each race, and were 4th overall at the end of the day.

Today was a very tricky day of racing, all the more so because we expected the races to start at 12 noon. As we were each enjoying a relaxing morning, we got a call from coach Skip Whyte at 8:55 a.m. warning us that racing STARTED at 10 a.m. Ouch! Skip helped us rig our boat, and gave us a high-speed tow to the racecourse, and we made it there around 9:50 a.m. with minutes to spare. Skip said his one requirement of getting us to the racecourse was that we have a good race. And we did! It was difficult conditions, a 12-14 knot northerly with big shifts and big velocity differences. We played the left side of the upwind, and were in first place at the first mark, and again never looked back, extending on every leg. Good job team!

The second race was very hard fought. The conditions were similar, and the wind kept shifting right. We again had a good start and played the left side of the course and almost made it to the top mark before the rightie filled in bringing the pack of boats from the right with it. We rounded the first mark in approximately 8th place, and fought it out in the back of the top pack for the rest of the race. We made some nice gains during the second lap and crossed the line in 5th. A boat refused to give us room at the 2nd leeward mark rounding, and Erin had to go into the protest room to prove our point.

The last race of the day was more of the same. The fleet was extremely dense and gains and losses were made throughout the race. We crossed the line in 10th.

Keep your fingers crossed for the medal race tomorrow!

Best,

Erin and Isabelle