Sailing Magazine
by Andrew Tarboton & Graeme Willcox
After waiting for the southerly wind to fill in the FX fleet was sent out to race for the scheduled 13h00 start. The 49er fleet was held ashore waiting for the FX fleet to complete their 3 races. We were then sent out and got to the race area at 15h00 only to find the FX fleet had only done 2 races. So the 49ers were started first followed by the FX fleet.
This made for some tight legs with one fleet running down and the other beating up and trying not to get run over or in someone’s way. We had a better day on the water, with three good starts and some good speed at times. We battled with finding clear lanes, which are hard to come by in a 40 boat 49er fleet. As the day wore on, the wind became streaky and we had some large switches. This made life interesting when tight tacking up along the cliffs as you need to be awake otherwise you went for a swim.
Today was no different from yesterday with a number of big collisions. The ARG boat had a port/starboard at the first mark which caused enough damage for them to retire. Then there was the Spanish boat which collided with the anchored committee boat while they had the kite up. One broken bow sprit and torn kite later they freed themselves for a slow sail back home.
With all this going one around us we came away with a 29, 29, 33. Which has moved us to 33rd overall.
Tomorrow’s forecast is slightly different to what we have had all week, so we see what we get.
33rd Graeme Willcox & Andrew Tarboton 30 (34) 28 29 29 32
72nd Stefano Marcia 42 33 25 35
