TEAM STRAMMER/BROWN

Zadar and the beautiful back drop from the water

Today marks the conclusion of the 49er World Championships here in Zadar with two final races completed before the 1pm deadline. Zach and I started the first race of the day off strong winning the pin end of the line in a 3-5 knot Northerly. Our excellent start leading out to the side with the most pressure put us in the top five for most of the race, eventually falling to sixth place at the finish. This week has been great experience for light air sailing–smoothness in the boat, meticulous trimming, prioritizing clean air, and overall finesse. Our second race wasn’t quite as spectacular as we attempted to win the left side again, but had a bit of bad luck when a slight right shift came in that lasted the entire beat, allowing all the boats to weather to beat us to the mark. A moment at the leeward gate marks gave us an opportunity to get back into a decent finish, however, we could never get a clean lane and, therefore, we couldn’t recover.

Still, we climbed in the overall rankings to finish 46th overall which is respectable for where are are in our campaign. The last three regattas have revealed our strengths and weaknesses and we now know how we should tailor our training moving forward. Our goal a year from now is to make Gold Fleet here at the Worlds, which is plausible once we put the necessary resources into our speed and technique. The transition from 46th to a top ten result in only a year may seem farfetched, but there are teams at this event that have achieved this goal (Go Bermuda!) and have inspired us to do the same.

The 49er Medal Race took place right off the shore with the pier in the background a significant obstruction on the race course!

For the next week, though, we are taking some much need time off. Next Tuesday marks two months of travel here in Europe, and we are ready to take the next week off to see our family and friends. Zach will head stateside while I will see my sister in London. Next week also marks the departure of our training partners, Nate and Thomas, who are going home for medical treatment of Nate’s back. We look forward to joining them again in the fall once they have recovered!

Man down... the only way to alleviate back pain

Our next event is the Delta Lloyd Regatta in Medemblik, Netherlands. With only ten boats registered, this event is not going to live up to the expectations of previous years. We are unsure why the turnout is so low this year, but we are hoping to take this opportunity to work with some other teams and coaches to begin working on our 2013 speed goal!

Tomorrow morning we leave for Zadar at 3am to take Nate to the airport in Zagreb before Thomas, Zach, and I continue to Medemblik, just outside Amsterdam, where we will leave our car and our rig.

We are thankful to Hedgeye and all of our supporters back home who are supporting us on our road to Rio!

Zadar city front at sunset

Silver fleet ready to launch for day 4

Three decent races yesterday in a light and shifty Northeasterly kept us on target for making Silver Fleet here at the 49er World Championships. We are very happy that we are continuing to meet our team objective of qualifying for Silver Fleet throughout our first European World Cup Tour. This is no easy task as we are still struggling with our fast forward speed and lack of experience. Additionally, we are also excited to be meeting our second objective which is to have no alphabets (DNF, DSQ, TLE) in our scoreline. Remarkably, making this second objective is much harder than one would expect!

On a side note, yesterday was also climactic as the final five berths for the 2012 Olympic Games were determined. In a final showdown against other nations and fellow countrymen, Bermuda, Canada, Greece, Italy, and Japan qualified for Gold Fleet which secured their spots at the Games.

Today we had very light winds around 3-7 knots filling after noon. The trend continued as Zach and I had great starts although we weren’t able to hold a lane for more than a minute or two out to the left–need more speed! This often left us unable to execute our game plan and would force us into the middle of the race course early on in the beat–rarely productive. However, this was no issue in race one as we battled in the top three around the marks. This race was by far the most fun we have had racing in a while since we were sailing well through the water and able to play the game the way we wanted. Throughout the race, we battled Italy and Uruguay ultimately finishing third overall!

Getting ready to bear-away at the windward mark

Race two and three was a bit windier, closer to 7 knots, and we found ourselves a bit off the pace at times and had some bad exchanges with the fleet, but we still ended the day with a 17-14. Once again, the fleet pushed the line hard and some teams managed to secure a few black flag penalties, which only has only helped to close the points gap–alphabets in the score line are bad!

We moved up six places today and we are in 19th/25 in Silver and 44th overall. However, the points are close and the light winds and numerous black flag penalties make further progress up the ladder highly possible.

For more information check out these links: results, video highlights, regatta website and live feed!

We have been told that we are by far the most visible team from shore with our American Flag and black Hedgeye logo prominently displayed on the main sail. Thank you Hedgeye and all of our friends and family at home for their support!

As promised Zadar has provided two days of light winds which has made for some tight racing. If there is one way to brings this speed crazed fleet closer together, it’s slowing it down! Yesterday concluded day two of the qualification series with today the last day for competitors to jockey for the final split into Gold, Silver, and Bronze fleet.

Welcome banner in the city of Zadar

Zach and I have made huge improvements from our light air training and competition in Palma in regards to our starting, boat handling, decision making, and boat speed. Throughout this event, we have had consistent top ten, even top five starts off the line and have been able to hold our lane for at least the first minute off the line. In fact, we have nailed our starts so well that each race boats around us have been penalized for starting over the line! Furthermore, we have started within 1-2 boats of the eventual race winners–a sign that we are competing for the favored end of the line. We are very excited about this improvement in our starts.

Our boat speed will continue to be one of our focuses over the next year and will be the difference between fighting in the 14-20th place and breaking into 8-14th place consistently. Yesterday, Fortuna was not on our side as we struggled playing ball with the fleet. It seemed that we were always in those positions where we were the ideal boat to get tacked or gybed on. Snagging a trash bag on our rudder just after the start of race six didn’t help things and made us fall 4-5 boat lengths behind the fleet. This made a huge difference at the windward mark which happened to be the most condense mark rounding I have seen yet! Instead of rounding in bow to stern in the middle of the fleet we found ourselves 6 boat lengths behind the peloton–far from making huge gains.

Forecast for the rest of the week... Light!

Currently, we are sitting in 51st but we feel confident that we can put together another three good races to qualify ourselves for Silver Fleet. Only ten points separate us and 41st, so we have the opportuity to make some big moves today! For more information check out these links: results, event website, video race day 1.

Thank you to our sponsor Hedgeye and all of our individual supporters back home!

A week of travel, adventure, and focused practice has come to an end as we prepare for the first race of the 2012 49er World Championships tomorrow. The beautiful shoreline of Zadar, Croatia is crowded with seventy-five 49ers poised for six days of racing on the Adriatic Sea. For Fred and me, it’s just another regatta, but for the 18 countries here fighting for the last 5 spots left at the 2012 Olympic Games, it’s going to be the defining moment of their campaign.

We left Hyeres, France last weekend and made a short pit stop in Italy before driving through the night to get to Zadar. As we drove along the shoreline of Italy passing through over 100 tunnels, we saw beautiful sights of the Mediterranean including the country of Monaco. We took a three hour break from the drive to have a real Italian pizza and check out some castles and scenery in Verona, Italy. Ancient architecture and beautiful sculptures lined the narrow streets of Verona.

Our original plan was to find a cheap motel near the eastern boarder of Italy and reach Zadar in the morning. But, as we have learned twice now on this European adventure, finding a room in a roadside motel is quite difficult. Apparently it was a four-day national holiday in Italy and every room in the entire country was booked. So, we drove through the night passing by Slovenia and arriving in Zadar just in time for the sunrise.

Zadar is a light wind venue so we spent the last week practicing our light air boat handling maneuvers and speed. The body of water we sail on is protected by five long barrier islands that extend hundreds of miles down the coast of Croatia. The forecast for this coming week has no days over 12 knots of wind. The water is pretty cold but the air temperature is consistently a nice 70 degrees making it the warmest site we’ve been at on this trip. The people in Croatia are incredibly nice, helpful, young, and proficient in the English language.

We took a day off to explore the Plitvice Lakes National Park which is home to some beautiful waterfalls and gorgeous natural scenery. It was a nice break to get away from the boat park and hike Croatia’s sixteen interconnected lakes.

Yesterday we measured in our boat and passed with flying colors. To pass the time between measurement and the opening ceremonies, we checked out the small city of Zadar and its famous sea organ. Waves lapping against the shore pass underneath the sea wall and into holes engineered to produce different musical notes. After our short tour, we enjoyed standing behind our flag at the opening ceremonies.

We will keep you updated throughout the event, but to keep a close eye on the results, check out the event website here: http://www.49erworlds.org. Wish us luck on our first of many 49er World Championships!

Thanks to all our families, friends, and sponsors for making this possible.

Looks like we finally got an idea of what conditions make the 49er unraceable on the World Cup Tour. As many of the veteran sailors and coaches can contest, this has been the windiest Hyeres in a long time. Over the last four days, only five races were sailed in the 49er class.

Good morning Hyeres!

On the last day of the qualifying series on Tuesday we saw winds exceeding 20 knots and a steep 2-4 foot chop building all day. Zach and I were in yellow fleet again and we were the first fleet to race. We crushed the start taking advantage of a seven boat length lead on the boats around us and were going decently up the first beat to the left. Three quarters up the beat, we tacked over with a great lane back to the right, crossing boats, and top ten in the race! Out of the tack, we heard a loud snap as Zach fell in the water. Holding onto the mainsheet, Zach managed to pull himself back into the boat without capsizing. Our first instinct was we had broken the trapeze bail, the small medal loop we use to hang out over the boat. Instead, we discovered that Zach’s hook on his harness was the culprit. Curses! With no way to fix this on the water, we sailed the 30 minutes upwind back to the beach taking a DNF for the day’s only race.

The following day, regular racing began and we had a full day of racing in silver fleet completing four races in a light southeasterly switching to southwesterly late in the day. A great start at the pin in the first race helped get our only top ten finish of the regatta. The following race we tried to execute the same maneuver at the start and we were almost successful. However, we had to tack out and couldn’t find any shifts to get us back into the front.

Moving from Echo to Delta

A short onshore postponement later, and we were sent to race on the Delta course. Compared to Echo course in the middle of the bay, Delta was tucked underneath the land which made for a great race course–lots of shifts, puffy, but still choppy. We completed two more races ending the day around 7pm with the sun setting in the beautiful French Riviera.

Awesome conditions for the rest of the fleet!

Conditions worsened, relatively speaking, for Thursday and Friday with no racing for the 49ers on last day of the regular sailing series and for the medal race on Friday (full results). However, the rest of the regatta enjoyed the 25+ conditions and the 1.5-2 meter waves rolling through the bay. Zach and I have had a great time here in Southern France and we have learned a great deal about the venue and the boat in windy conditions. Our frustrations are only temporary as try to keep things in perspective. This is our first European World Cup Tour and only our third event sailing together. We know we are beginning our Olympic Campaign at a strategic time and, additionally, we are making some great connections here overseas which will help us just a few months down the road. Already, we are making plans for the fall to organize better training and development including more coaching with more North American and International teams.

The road to Croatia

Today we begin our 14 hour drive to Zadar, Croatia. On the way, we will pass through southeastern France before entering northern Italy. With our housing starting on Sunday, we will have an opportunity to do a little sight seeing somewhere along the way, but we are eager to get to Zadar where the many teams have been training for the last two weeks. The 49er Worlds will be the last opportunity for teams to qualify their country for the 2012 Olympic Games with only five berths remaining. You can bet that everyone will be bringing their best!

Thank you Hedgeye and all of our friends and family back home for their support!

MISTRAL! What a great venue for breezy conditions and short choppy waves. Yesterday proved to be a difficult day of racing even for the world’s best.

Wire down!

We began racing on Monday at 11am with winds in the high teens building to the mid twenties as the only 49er race for the day expired. Zach and I made it down to the starting line ready to take on the conditions, but began to have trouble bearing away once the breeze built a few knots over 20 knots–it’s amazing how just four knots escalates the difficulty of this boat! After a few failed attempts bearing away to get down to the starting line, we managed to start the race two minutes behind the fleet. Sailing up the first beat we felt better about our speed (thanks Dave!) which has been an issue, and rounded the windward mark just behind the fleet. We made the turn downwind–yes!– and began skipping off the short and steep waves. We gybed on the layline for the gate–yes!–but a bad wave caught us off-guard and we found ourselves upside down again. By this point, we realized that there was little chance of us finishing within ten minutes of the leaders to make the time limit, so we decided to reserve our energy for the next race.

Watching the fleet sail in these conditions was odd. In the windy conditions, we expected the top guys to be speeding around the race course pushing the boat to the limit. Instead, the fleet seemed to be moving in slow motion. Everyone was throttling back, especially downwind, to keep their bows up and out of the waves. Having sailed in conditions much windier and wavier than this in other classes, its hard to accept that even the best in the world recognize that this is the beginning of survival conditions. The 49er is by far one of the most challenging boats I have ever encountered!

2.4 meter fully underwater

As Zach and I rested, we realized that conditions were only getting worse, and we decided to practice some boat handling under the lee of the beach where we could moderate how wavy it was before heading in with the fleet once they finished. Racing was postponed for the rest of the day and eventually abandoned later that afternoon. Onshore, it was one of those days where everyone had a story to exemplify how gnarly the conditions were; this 470 nose-dived and broke a mast, a 2.4 broached and sank, and only 11 out of 28 49ers in yellow fleet finished the race. Lots of buzz around the boat park.

It even happens to the best--another casualty for the day.

Conditions today were much better, wind 12-18 knots, although the pesky, short and steep chop still persisted. After blue fleet sailed two races, we hit the water and sailed 3 races in a range of conditions. A crowded leeward mark in race one caused us to capsize, and in subsequent races we couldn’t keep pace with the rest of the fleet. A highlight of the day was our start in the last race when we took advantage of the line sag and got a five boat length jump on the fleet!

Wind forecast

Tomorrow we are expecting conditions to get, gnarly. The race committee has decided to begin racing at 9am and conclude racing before the 30+ winds come through around noon. We are first start once again in yellow fleet. Tomorrow is the last day of the qualifying series before the fleet splits into Gold and Silver. You can follow results online and even follow the racing live! Our goal for the rest of the event is to log more hours on the water in the boat and continue to learn–gotta pay your dues!

Big thanks to Hedgeye and all of our supporters at home who are making this trip possible!

Mistral Conditions

What a week of training in the French Riviera with the mighty Mistral blowing almost every day since our arrival. These westerly winds bring strong breeze and waves, which makes for exciting sailing conditions in some classes while we 49er sailors can only watch from shore. Luckily, we have been able to get a few days of sailing and have been fortunate to get some video and pictures of our sail and rig setup thanks to US Sailing Coach, Dave Hughes. This perspective gives us invaluable information to compare our tuning to the other teams we have been analyzing over the last month. There is no doubt that our results show that we are in the ball park, but the photos show we have to make some significant changes. Tuning changes are pretty easy compared to the time we have spent learning to just maneuver the boat so we don’t have far to reach our next level of progression!

Upwind grind with Hyeres in the background

There are only 56 competitions racing here in the 49er fleet which is twenty less in attendance than at the Palma regatta. We are unsure what the format will be after the qualifying series ends on Tuesday, but I imagine there will only be two fleets–gold and silver. Tomorrow we will be in yellow fleet with a first start at 11am. We are expecting a westerly breeze around 10-15 knots building up to 25 knots all day. Time to get back into heavy-air race mode!

Heading to the docks

For live racing results and more, visit the regatta website!

Hola! Or, Bonjour! Zach and I are now in Southern France with a few days to spare before the Semaine Olympique Francaise. We arrived last night after another eventful trip from Barcelona.

We took off from Palma Sunday night on an 11pm ferry arriving in Barcelona the following morning at 7:45am. With a day to spare before our housing began on Tuesday, we took Monday off to explore the city of Barcelona. Our first destination was the famous La Rambla street which is famous for the people that make their living enticing tourists with three-cups-and-a-ball gambling, photos with living statues, Font de Canaletes, and an assortment of foods at the bizarre. Next we hopped on the subway to one of Barcelona’s most iconic churches, the Sangrada Familia, designed by Spain’s Antoni Gaudi. Truly beautiful and novel, this building is still under construction outliving its architect by over 90 years!

Zach, I think that angel just winked at me!

Guadi’s imprint on the city is also found in the statues in Guell Park, which over look the city. Ceramic mosaics are found on statues of Lizards and park benches and ginger bread houses guard the entrance to the park. One gets the feeling that they have fallen down the rabbit hole in, Alice’s Adventures of Wonderland. At the highest point in the park, a small platform with a stone cross lookout over the city of Barcelona. From here we could see the the busy streets and stone buildings of the city all the way to the Mediterranean Sea–an incredible view! Big thanks to our tour guide, Sara Morgan Watters for walking us around Barcelona!

Guell Park on the famous park bench that wraps around the entire park overlooking Barcelona

The next morning we were up early to begin our day trip to Hyeres. We secured our rig as well as the other US 49er Team’s van and trailer from Port Olympic, where the 1996 Olympic Games were held in Spain. The coffee had barely set in when Erik and Trevor’s trailer, which I was driving, was eyed suspiciously by the Policia motorcade and we were forced to pull over. My Spanish was really put to the test as the officer explained to me that the masts were sticking too far off the back of our trailer–ok, no problem-o. I handed over my license and waited to see the outcome of this situation. When the officer came back a second time, I knew things were going to get worse. It took the officer five minutes to explain to me that I needed an International Driver’s License, which I didn’t have or knew that I needed, and he called in some more reinforcements to translate the circumstances of the situation. Two and a half hours later, there were five policemen, I was being fined over $400 for two violations, and our chances of making it to France looked slim. In Europe, fines are paid immediately and, interestingly, we could pay the small fine for the trailer with a credit card, but the other larger fine had to be paid in cash. A large withdrawal from an ATM later and some shuffling of the masts, we settled the matter with the Policia, and were allowed to continue on our journey. We quickly made our way out of the city to the highway were we hoped we would encounter fewer law enforcement.

The ride from Barcelona to France is beautiful. Driving north to the border, we passed the snow-capped Pyrenees Mountains and as we made our way East along the Mediterranean, we passed impressive castles with small towns and narrow cobble stone streets hugging its foundation. Vast fields or rocky mountains dominant the skyline. Occasionally, a large aqueduct or a stone arch appear standing alone amongst an army of cypress trees. Truly novel and incredible to see.

The Caravan

We got to Hyeres just in time to see the sun setting over our new home. We are a five minute walk from the yacht club, on the beach, with a horse racing track just behind the house. In addition to Thomas and Nate, we are once again joined by the US Men’s 470 Team of Stu and Graham in addition to a few US Sailing coaches and the women’s 470 team. We have one big house here!

Hyeres house at sunset

We have a busy day today getting the boat rigged, the house provisioned, and getting some time on the water. The famous Mistral is in, so temperatures in in the low 60s and the wind is from the West currently at 20 knots, expecting to increase this afternoon. Hats and 4:3 wetsuits are going to be our new business suits with the change in weather.

Our view from the house looking over the race course

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 10^th 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 50^th 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!

After a great first day of racing on Monday, we have found it hard to match and carry that momentum throughout the event. However, even with a disappointing day yesterday, we still managed to qualify for Silver Fleet. It’s nice to know that while we didn’t sail our best, we are still solidly contending with the Silver crowd.

Today we were awoken early this morning by some very loud thunderstorms which caused a several hour delay to the racing due to lack of wind. A very light southwesterly filled in around noon with thunderstorms clearing, which allowed racing to begin for the day. The format for racing after the qualifying series is unique in that they give ultimate priority to the Gold Fleet, then Silver, and then Bronze–often Silver and Bronze gets significantly less races in and the quality is poorer. Silver was the first fleet on the water today and we had two very light and very lumpy races–these coach boats are seriously encroaching on the racecourse!

Race one we were having a decent beat after an OK start by holding a lane out to the left and coming in on a nice port layline. On our final approach to the mark, we found a nice gap in the starboard tacker lineup and threw in a tack setting ourselves up for a 10th place rounding. Little did we know we were seconds from disaster. Two boats just ahead and to leeward of us who were thin on layline decided to attempt the impossible and double tack so they could lay the mark. Suddenly, we found ourselves perfectly teed up to hit GBR at their port chain plates. Unprepared for this unfathomable move and unable to bear away to avoid, we went head to wind colliding with GBR while several boats that were on our line behind us hit us astern in several places. Yelling, in several languages, ensued. As we slowly regained control of our boat, GBR, who had somehow made it around the mark, gybed-set and hit us again while on port heading downwind–we were still on starboard!! The situation escalated to the point were they were again attached to us and their tiller extension was caught in our brand new jib, bending dangerously to the breaking point. Zach was thoughtful enough to save their tiller extension, although next time he will not be as kind. Fouled twice, going backwards, and still yelling furiously at the guilty parties, we finally double tacked and rounded the mark, dead ___ last. Once in the back of the fleet, there are few passing lanes especially here where there are few puffs and barely any shifts. Additionally, the coach boat wash gets worse the further back in the fleet you are. Still, we leveraged hard left again on the second beat and passed a few boats to finish 15th/25.

Race two. We had one of our best starts in the regatta and we were able to hold all the way out to the left side of the racecourse towards the shore. We tacked to consolidate on a nice left phase a few minutes before port layline but once again fortuna was not on our side. Typically, boats will lead larger groups coming from a side to set themselves up for a potential to gain on the next shift, but several boats decided to lead us back instead. Our lane back to the right went from decent, to OK, to sketchy, to doomed as we approached the starboard layline with all the boats that ducked boatlengths behind us gaining significantly. At this point, we were committed and rounded mark one, once again, in last. We are slowly learning that it pays to be riskier, like coming in hard on laylines or even tacking to clear your lane if it’s not perfect, if your in the upper pelaton. A light run with swell and a choppy leeward mark rounding later, we found no passing lanes.

With a 15-23 for the day we find ourselves solidly in the bottom of Silver Fleet and 50th overall. However, a stellar day tomorrow with a little luck and we could potentially vie for a mid fleet finish. Conditions tomorrow are forecasted to be windier with a 5-15 mph sea breeze, however, conditions will be unstable. Easter weekend will yield some great sailing conditions with winds from the N at 20+ which will make for some awesome spectating for the Medal Race on Saturday. Tentatively, we are going to take advantage of the windy conditions and continue to sail both Saturday and Sunday so that we don’t get too soft sailing in the light and lumpy southerlies which have prevailed since our arrival.

Stay tuned for the regatta recap! Check out race results here.