Another Close miss....

Today started with no wind (big surprise!) and a long delay. Finally at about 12 o’clock a nice breeze came in alowing us to get out of the steaming hot marquee and actually go do some racing. Due to loss of time the race committee advised us that instead of going to a top six round robin after the first round robin was completed they would instead only take the top four. This was going to make things very tight to make the top four.

We had four races in row and knew we had to win a couple of them make the finals series. First up we had Jacako Pasinni. We lost the start but fought very hard to stay in touch. After two long one track beats we managed to make some small gains and round the top mark one legnth behind. With a short, down tide run to the finish we were unable to roll him and lost by two legnths.
Our next opponent was Manu Weiller of Spain. We won the start and sailed two superb beats to take the victory and a much needed point.
Race 3 was aginst Peter Wibroe from Denmark. He had been sailing well all regatta so we knew it was a tough race. The start was tough with the current making the lay line very high.Unable to win the favoured pin end we made the task ahead very difficult. We then fought very hard once again and managed to climb back into him by using our good knowledge of sailing in current. We had a good bottom mark rounding and turned up inside him. With the obstuction drawing near we tacked first back out into the tide. We then tried to tack back underneath him but stopped as we were going to clip him and came out in his dirty air. This made it harder and he sailed well to keep his lead and win the race.
Our last race was against top ranked Damien Iehl. With the start gun going we were both over but made sure we came off the line better. By doing this we conceded a penalty but were happy with the lead. We managed to get the first cross and get in out of the current. We then extended our lead but took a couple of unlucky knocks at the top and he gained a little. We rounded the bottom mark well but lost guage due to the tide. He then Rounded on our hip 5 legnths behind but lifted. We tacked back to cross by a legnth but he was then out of phase and out of tide. We came back and he dipped,we tacked at the same time as him but didn’t complete onto port in time and got another penalty. Taking the penalty immediately put us well behind and impossible to come back. It was a dissapointing loss but the lesson was learnt.

This put us on 6 wins 5 losses which we knew was going to be tough to make the top 4.We then had 3 painful matches to watch to see if it would go our way. It did for a few minutes and then it went horribly wrong as we watched someone run aground who we needed to win. We can’t blame the fact that others didn’t win who should have as we could have easily won a couple more. We are sailing at a much higher level now and just need to fine tune our skills and strategies to be able to win the races we should have won.

We now have to sail off for 5 and 6th place tomorrow morning so the boys will be pumped and ready to defend our position!!!

WAKA Racing