Dear Friends,

We finally got some more races off yesterday, Thursday, June 5th. Our first race was great, a 5th, but the other two were not what we needed to qualify for gold fleet. A 17th and a 12th left us in 30th at the end of the day, 7 points out of qualifying for gold fleet. In the second race we were in good shape until we fouled a boat at a windward mark and spun a 720 penalty turn. In the last race when the water became very choppy, we had pointing problems upwind and struggled to keep lanes for long periods of time. Needless to say we fought hard for our 12th place finish, and it wasn’t good enough.

We still have three days of racing ahead of us, three days of fantastic learning opportunities that we will make the most of. Our next goal is to finish at the top of Silver Fleet, 25th overall. We are off to the gym this morning to go work out before hitting the race course.

Stay tuned! For complete scores please visit the regatta website:

http://www.470.org/champ07/euro/

For racing details from yesterday, please read on:

Yesterday morning there was still no wind, and we were again postponed on shore. We positioned our boat on the launch ramp so that we could be one of the first teams on the water as soon as the postponement flag came down. Our goal going into yesterday was to get three top-ten finishes.

We launched at 12:50 pm, and the first race started at about 1:45 p.m. We knew it would be an unstable race because the wind had been coming from many different directions before the race — all the way from southwest to a true westerly. The course was a trapezoid inner loop. We had a good start halfway down the line, and headed left. We took a small lefty wind-shift back towards the right, and positioned ourselves very well, rounding the first windward mark in the top ten. We held in that position for the next downwind and upwind. The wind faded on the top reach, and we ghosted up to the pack in front of us. We gybed at the windward mark away from the rest of the boats, splitting radically in absolutely no wind — it was all we could do to keep the spinnaker flying. We gybed back onto starboard, and converged with the pack that had gone in the other direction at on the leeward mark. There had been a big left shift, so we did not gybe for the finish and soaked low in the puff, passing boats that had gybed and mismanaged the last leg. We finished the race in 5th — fantastic!

As soon as we finished the race, a nice 12 knot breeze filled in — radically different conditions. We started at the middle of the line and could not hold our lane, so tacked out towards the right. We came back towards the left on a nice right wind shift, and were behind most boats that had gone further left. We concluded that there was more wind on the left, and went all the way left getting in the best breeze on the course. We approached the windward mark in the top ten and got a little too greedy — instead of ducking and going behind two boats we tried to tack in front of them, fouling them in the process. We lost many boats while spinning, and tried to grind back but couldn’t get higher than 17th. Bummer.

Going into the last race, we knew we needed a top five to have a realistic chance of qualifying for gold. The wind had died again, and we had to race in light air and choppy water, our hardest conditions. We did not have the height that we needed, and fought for every point, never giving up. We finished in 12th.

Overall, our average finishes were approximately 12th, right in the middle of a 24 boat fleet.

We’re getting a lot better, and are looking forward to the next three days of racing.

Best,

Erin and Isabelle

www.470TeamUSA.com

erin@470TeamUSA.com
isabelle@470TeamUSA.com