Day 2 of Racing

Day 2 of racing at the Europeans was slightly better than the first in terms of breeze. I was at least trapping upwind for most of the day and occasionally on the very tight reaches downwind. There was enough breeze (i.e., no postponement) to complete 2 races in 6-10 knots of breeze. John and I had a pretty poor start for the first race. We were getting pinched off and was unable to power past someone to leeward. As it turns out, that boat was pretty slow. We should have bailed quite a bit earlier, and this poor start hurt us for much of the race, as we weren't able to get a good lane. We finished roughly 61st out of 65 boats. A bit ugly.

Race 3 was a bit better. The breeze turned around a bit more to come from the northeast. We had a much better start and were able to spring free. We scored a 41st again. Ethan Bixby and Eric Boothe won the race (good stuff for the East Coast) while Drew Buttner and Ramsey Key were again in the top ten. Both boths are doing well in the lighter breeze.

The course has quite a bit of chop. It's hard to tell if it's due to the bay, the 60+ boats, or the 15+ support boats zipping around. Anyways, it's making upwind tough (hard to hold a lane if you need to keep bearing off to keep speed) and downwind a bit dicey in the light breeze. There's also a hugh current line as well, with noticeable current differences across 15 boatlengths. John and I haven't quite figured it all out yet.

Today looks to be another light one. Competitors are starting to wonder how Palermo ended up with the selection. I think it's easy: all the girlfriends / wives who were at Warnemunde in 2006 and were freezing were like, "Hey, let's go to Italy!" and then the decision was made. Nice to know who really makes the decisions in the 5O5 class.

No cumulative results through race 3 have been posted. I'll hop back on later tonight.