Thursday, sigh...

The first day back from the layday at Worlds started well for Team Interstate 95. We had a really good start, getting launched out off the starting boat, pointing high and sailing fast. The breeze had come in from west of north touching about 10 knots – a great breeze compared with what we had seen so far. The breeze had shown up quite a bit later than normal – the RC kept us ashore for 2 hours with a lack of breeze postponement. The fleet now refers to the AP flag as the “cappuccino flag,” as everyone goes back to the yacht club for a cappuccino when it goes up.

Anyways, after getting off to a great start, we found ourselves probably in top 30 about 2/3 up the first beat. Then, John and I returned to our human forms and slowed dropped down through the rest of the race. We’re still losing boats upwind and catch the occasional boat or two downwind. For example, we caught 3 boats at the jibe mark by rolling them to windward (i.e., getting me up on the wire and powering over them). We seem to be pretty good at catching boats stuck in inopportune situations such as being outside at the leeward mark (during the 90 yard beat to the finish) or at the jibe mark. We finished the race back down in the 100s, our usual position. We haven’t been able to put together a great race.

Well, after a 2 hour delay in the morning and light breeze, there was no time left in the day for the second scheduled race. We had 3 races remaining over the past two days, and the breeze does not look to be cooperating. The Mediterranean Sea currently looks glassy, as usual. Tonight is the Annual General Meeting of the Int’t 505 class. I’m not sure what’s on the schedule. I may ask some questions about the international website, which is pretty poor.

Ian Pinnell and crew Gibbons (?) continue to dominate. Yesterday’s race looks to be their drop (still only a 9). Howie Hamlin and Mike Zinn are still in contention, about 20 points behind. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll see much more in terms of breeze.

Italy continues to be Italy. We dined last night at the yacht club with other US East Coast sailors. It was tasty, though certainly not as exciting as some of the other dining venues. Friday is my last full day here. We have one race and then need to start packing the container. We’ll have 8 boats going in, which makes it a pretty tight fit.