Race 3
A Downwind start equilateral triangle started on Thursday morning in a fresh SSE breeze.
At the start RCYC, SYC and SPYC had a clean getaway with us just barely holding on to the back of them. The first reach towards the wing mark was tight and meant we had to sneak height wherever possible. As the other teams slowly inched away from us we decided to make the change from our A3 to our larger A2 from the gybe mark. This worked out quite well as we where able to hold the bigger kite on the deeper leg towards the bottom mark.
The upwind leg saw everyone in the fleet go to the right hand side of the course. We decided to do something different as we believed there were no gains to be made by playing follow the leader. We went left and it wasn’t long before we tacked onto what was the layline. Everything looked gravy and we seemed to have made big gains on the j33 and Beneteau. But then a progressively shocking header brought us crashing down to earth and a big loss to the boats in front.
The following downwind was fresher than before and we were force to change back to our A3 in order the hold the angle on the tight leg to the wing mark. While changing we did a back down to find a large trash bag and bucket on our keel.
The last upwind we went to the far righthand side of the course. This was more to minimize maneuvers and physical effort, at this point we where at the back of the fleet with no chance to catch up and overtake.
It was a disappointing race for us, but we have learnt a lot and our spirits are not broken. He rest of the races will be our bread and butter windward leeward races in fresher breeze which we are very much looking forward to.
