
The final day of regular racing ended in climactic fashion with passing storm cells that antagonized a Southwesterly breeze and swell. Gold fleet started racing on Friday with three, triple windward-leeward races in a moderate sea breeze with a building sea state. By the time Silver fleet hit the water some time after noon, the conditions were similar with breeze in the mid to high teens and a four to six foot swell funneling into the bay. For us, the breeze strength was not concerning. Instead, the large swells with intermittent chop presented unique and challenging sailing conditions. Succinctly, swells can have several effects on the sailing performance of the boat by affecting wind strength and the balance of the boat as it rises and falls on the wave.
After a general recall start, our first race commenced under a black flag start with us punched near the middle-boat end of the line. Our rig was tuned well for the conditions and we had top speed heading out to the top left edge of the race track, which was great since we had never sailed in such a gnarly sea state before. We rounded the first windward mark overlapped to windward of the Chilean 49er Team on a hot port layline putting us in second overall! A quick tack and a nervous bear-away later, we had the spinnaker flying and we were hauling on starboard tack downwind. Around this time, a large squall began to influence our race course and conditions began to escalate. With the steep swell and the boat’s incredible speed, we were catching waves easily which caused us to run into the steep face of the wave ahead. These conditions are hard on the crew since he has to over-trim the kite to slow the boat down while the driver steers up sharply to avoid nose diving into the wall of water ahead. Easing and trimming constantly, these 4-5 minute runs are tiresome!
We made a left hand turn at the leeward mark and had a decent beat losing one or two boats. Again we made the bear-away at the top mark and delayed our spinnaker set as several boats had capsized trying to turn downwind—definitely no easy task! A minute later and we were looking to gybe towards the leeward gate marks, however a bad section of chop and swell forced us to gybe past the layline for the mark. Pointing below our desired course for our next mark, we had to douse the spinnaker early so that we could two-sail reach back upwind towards the gate. As we sped back towards the fleet, we found ourselves sailing on the fastest angle to the wind almost perpendicular to the over-head swells—some were even breaking. I wish we had the GoPro filming at this point because we almost achieved flight on a few takeoffs with only the bottom edge of the rudder clinging to the water.
Another downwind leg behind us, we made a left hand turn at the gate and headed to the right side of the race course. A bad tack halfway up the beat caused us to capsize (driver has to ease the jib out of the tack!) but we recovered quickly. As we approached the windward mark for the last time, we noticed that several boats had retired from racing so as long as we finished we were going to have a good result. As we passed the top mark, we rushed the bear-away resulting in a capsize. Several minutes passed before we were finally able to right the boat and continue sailing downwind. We made progress downwind before again capsizing from burying the bow in a steep wave. Once we righted the boat again, we two-sail reached to the finish where we capsized surfing down a huge wave as we crossed the line. As we stood on the centerboard, Zach chatted with the Race Committee and learned that we had made the time limit to finish, but we were black flagged at the start (BFD) so we would be scored last place plus one—we would have finished 10th in that race because of the high rate of attrition!

This photo doesn't quite show just how wavy it was, but if the bow is launching out of the water this much upwind, you know it's wavy!
Racing was postponed on shore as the Race Committee waited for the storm to pass, which was fine with us since two of our top battens on the main had punctured through the forward batten pockets and needed to be repaired before we continued racing. Before we began the repairs, we first sought a judge for permission to switch our main sail so that we could make a proper repair later. Our request, however, was denied and as the postponement flag was lowered minutes later, we frantically made cursory repairs to the batten pockets so that we could sail the final race of the regatta. Twenty minutes later, we launched, the last boat in Silver fleet to leave the beach, and started the race three and a half minutes behind the rest of the fleet. By now, the wind had fallen to around ten knots but the waves were still quite large. Almost a full leg behind, we worked hard and caught up to the fleet by the first leeward marks. One lap later, we had passed a boat and were battling with the back of the fleet. Another lap, and we had passed two boats and we were still climbing. With one downwind leg left, we worked hard to try and pass just one more boat. An opportunity came just thirty yards from the finish when we ducked two starboard tack boats and caught one huge wave which we surfed for a solid twelve seconds, passing four boats at the finish! We were stoked to have sailed such a great race when the odds were stacked against us! On the reach in, a few coaches congratulated us on our performance—not a bad way to end! We would have never made the start had it not been for our ISV training partners Thomas Barrows and Nate Rosenberg who rigged for us while we were making repairs—thanks boys! For the day, we had a BFD-15 and finished 50th overall. Full results can be found here.

Zach and me catching up!
We took Saturday off to recover and watch some of the medal racing taking place just off the beach. It was great to see Jonas and Soren, the 2008 49er Gold medalists who chartered our other 49er for the Miami OCR, match race their fellow countrymen to win the regatta and also take the lead in their 2012 Olympic qualifying standings. Additionally, we met up with Chris Herrera from Jaguar Fitness to put together a workout and nutrition program, which is always a challenge when traveling outside the U.S. With different food sources and the amount of sailing we are doing, the likelihood that we lose muscle mass and weight is extremely high. Chris is going to work with us to build muscle when good gyms are available and at least maintain our fitness and weight otherwise.
Today is Easter Sunday and a cool 13-18mph breeze is coming off the mountains. After a hearty breakfast, we are looking forward to continuing our training for our next event only ten days away in Hyeres, France. We will continue to enjoy S’Arenal and Palma Bay here on Mallorca before we take an 11pm ferry next Sunday back to mainland Europe.
Thank you to Hedgeye and everyone back home who continue to support us every day on our Road to Rio!