Shark Worlds: Day 1
As usual, I behind on reporting events. Better late than never.
We had a great first race. The Race Committee had to postpone until about 1230 before the SSE breeze started to settle in. It was still holey (is that a word?) and shifty. Our first race we had a mediocre start, but quickly found our selves in a nice lead coming from the left corner. We round the first windward, the first downwind first with about 5-6 boat lengths to spare. At the second windward mar, we had an increase in wind and screwed up the tacking angles, which had us overstood by a few boat lengths. This mistake gave the second, third and fourth place boats an opportunity and we lost them shortly after the mark. Lucky for us one of the boats hit the committee boat at the finish and they had to go back and do spins, so we ended up third in that race.
The second race was a bloody tragedy. We had a good start and found ourselves in a good position on the fleet off the line, pretty deep in the left corner. We had a great angle on the fleet, but for some reason our boat speed just totally tanked. We were way deep as we rounded the windward mark, and it was hard to fight our way back. On the second windward leg we kept getting tacked on and kept having to work our way right, to the starboard layline. We ended up mid-fleet, so we sailed a drop on the first day. Damn.
Today is a new day. We have chatted it out, and i think that we’ve done some attitude adjustment that will help us today. Generally the boat is fast, points, and is rigged well for manouvers. (Roundings, tacks, and jibes have gone fairly smoothly, but we still need to be diligent about cleaning up after stuff and making sure that everything is running smoothly.)
I’m going to try and keep these blog entries up, but it’s a little tough as I have to get up early to do this. If it peters out, than I hope you will understand.
July 27th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Sorry to hear your first sailing bits aren’t working out too well. I totally forgot you were even in Toronto, because I’m there for the summer now.
July 28th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Deb and I are preparing boat…shark 918…dolphinII for Cold Lake Alberta 35 mile “Endurance Challenge Series” and wishing I were in the thick of it at the worlds….wishing you fellow sharkies all the best
July 30th, 2006 at 5:54 am
Heh Christina. Yeah we were in TO all week, but more than a little consumed with the sailing. It was a good time, but totally exhausting.
July 30th, 2006 at 5:58 am
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the good wishes. It was not really typical Toronto wind this week, 3-6 knots in the morning, usually building to 10-12 in the afternoon. Lots of boomers in the afternoons.
Good luck with your distance race. Our LD was more than a little challenging. light breeze and almost a knot of current made for some challenging conditions. We had a big shift on the first leg that put us in like 48th, but on the downwind we sailed a smart leg and accomodated for the current and made back almost 35 boats!
Good luck with the boat. Hopefully we’ll see you at the worlds next year in Austria!