OUCH!

Well the day on water was a very eventful one. We have many goods things that happened and a couple of not so good things as well.

We are starting the boat very well again, the second start was a glamor! We have speed and angle which was missing in Cowes and we are looking better on the crew work side. However we managed to give away far too many boats with bad luck, bad tactics and a couple bad gybes.

In the first race we were solidly in the top six for the first 3/4 of the beat. We had great speed and Bill put us in really nice spots. Tea's driving is getting better by the leg and we were quite at ease with where we were. As we were approaching the far left side, Bill called for a tack as the other boat just to windward of us had motioned that they were going to tack. As we tacked they changed their mind and we did not have enough room to duck so we had to "panic" tack back. That caused us to lose a few precious boat lengths and set up for further disaster later.

We now are fully on port tack layline and as we came to the mark we did our tack inside two boat lengths and fouled another team. So we needed to do a 360 penalty turn. We ended up rounding the mark last! That is how close the racing is here. We did manage to pass a boat on the final run, we are really fast downwind the Quantum A2 is awesome!

For the second race we were all set up down near the pin end, allowed one boat to cross over us on port so that we kept our hole on the line. Just as we were starting to turn up after his stern we got hit from below by Atlantica and the hole you see above was created. Tea did a great job of regaining focus and just driving the boat. We again had speed and angle as good as anyone. We rounded the top in 6th place. We had another good run with lots of pace. We passed one boat and rounded the bottom mark in 5th place. This is where the race goes pear shaped.

The wind was starting to fight the gradient breeze versus the sea breeze and Bill thought that the sea breeze would win the battle so we headed off to the right. Well as it turns out it did not and we rounded the top mark the second time in 12th. We again sailed lower and faster then people on the runs. We made considerable time up on 4 boats, not quite enough against one, we finished overlapped, and did catch and pass another boat. So we ended up with a 11th.

Our standings do not show how well we are going through the water. What was once our problem is gone! We have speed and can hold a lane. Now we just need to the crew work down to no mistakes and get around the race a little better and we will start to see some solid results.

Once we hit the dock Bill and Guiness started to attack the hole in the side. We are lucky to have two boat builders on the team this week. I was supervisor/gopher for the product. We did miss the party but the boat is ready to sail today.

We have the coastal race today and some VIP on board for that. I heard it was a Olympic gold medalist in Cross Country skiing. More on that tomorrow.
Cheers

Tac