I made sure we had a Canberra Yacht Club sticker on the boat yesterday to help us with the shiftiness that is Cascade Locks. Very like Canberra, except there is current, and it is windy every day!
Day one of the Worlds was definitely breezy, all done, and day two will soon be underway. Bit of a mixed bag for many of us!
Speaking of bags, how cute is this!? The Japanese gave it to me as a good luck present at the welcome night. “It reminded us of you, little and cute”. So sweet – hopefully we can sail a bit smarter today and do it justice!
Yesterday, we had three races in 15 to 24 knots made for some interesting results among the fleet, except for the regatta leaders who managed to win three of the three races.
We were second in the first race after an average start and digging our way out nicely. We rounded the top mark in fifth, and sailed the downwind well to be in second by the bottom. We went back to third up the work, but took second place back again down the second run and held out until the finish.
In the second race we had a rough start, getting locked in to leeward and windward in dirty air. There was no way to bail. By the time we did get out and managed to get to the top mark we were well deep. Thanks to our downwind speed we managed to dig our way out to around the 15 mark.
In race three we had another rough start, and ducked most of the fleet to bail out after our jam in race two. We managed to come back on a good right hander to the left, and played that side up to the top mark to be in the top five. Unfortunately the starboard tack parade was as wide as it was long, and we ended up doing a 720 for infringing. We got back in the game down the run, top ten or so and sailed well up the work to be back in the game, until we had a port and starboard incident on the work with Sato and Yasu. We had to tack off starboard to avoid a collision with them. Again at the top mark we had an issue. We tacked underneath the starboard parade, but Dad dropped his mainsheet so we were struggling to make the mark. When we were shooting we ended up in irons… hit the mark, and by the time we got out and had done our 360 penalty we were well back again. We managed to come back down the run and reaches, and got another boat on the line to finish 16th. I was pretty exhausted after that race to say the least!
Today we are back in the hunt, with 11 races still to go in the series. We are still sitting in 8th overall, and the third Aussie. USA boats take up most of the top five. Pretty awesome sailing in the puffy and shifty conditions. If we can sail at our best, and not make errors we should be able to make the podium come the end. Just going to go out there and enjoy the heavy air sailing that we do so well for two little Aussies!
On Aussie shenanigans, our car has become the Aussie team transport-mobile apparently… hilarious moment this one from welcome night. Mum and Dad yelled at me “Get in the car” to which the Aussie team answered “Ok” and all climbed in! Good times 🙂
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Again thanks to all for the words of encouragement, couldn’t do it without you 🙂 Have a most awesome day!
