Friday, August 20, 2010

4th day of racing, the eagle has landed

Launching my Moth "gimme more"

Sorry to tell you folks this again, but we had another spectacular day of racing here in Switzerland. The sun was out, the Maloya Wind was pumping and the Moths were flying. The US Airforce Team was looking solid. Bora has finally taken the overall lead with another two bullets and a second. His main competition, Nathan Outerridge, had a tough day with another impressive break down (layers of Carbon coming off his main horizontal), but still scored ok results. Tomorrow it will come down to who beats who in the remaining races.
Anthony was also struck by bad luck when his lashing of the shrouds broke and his rig came down. He got towed back to the beach and the shore team had him up and running for the last race.

It seems that as the racing is drawn out we are seeing more and more breakdowns happening. These boats need constant maintenance in order to be in racing shape. Luckily (touch wood or my head) I haven't had anything that held me back so far. It's nice to be racing with a brand new boat....
Those who have been following the racing on-line with the Trak Trak GPS System know by now that I had a pretty nice day. Each race I felt better and better and kept pushing the boat harder. In the first two races I scored a 6th and a 5th, capitalizing on my upwind speed and just staying out of trouble around gates and low pressure zones. For the last race I gave it all I had and came off the starting line with all guns blazing. After some mediocre tacks I still managed to round the top mark in 4th position. The breeze was up and I had told myself I would push it hard downwind. With some well placed gybes I rounded the leeward gate in 3rd! Nothing wrong there. But then my luck ran out and during a mini second laps of concentration I stuffed the bow and the boat went stern up. For the first time this regatta I lost my cool and yelled out some swiss/french/italian/american profanities as I got on the centerboard to right my boat. Bora sailed past me during the whole process and cheered me on to get my act back together again quickly. After getting back in the saddle I managed to get back in 8th place. Tough way to end the day, but still a very good overall performance with the improvement arrow still showing up.

Don't believe the results are up yet so checkout the website later.
Tomorrow morning we have to get out of our apartment and then it's off to the club for the last few races.

Send us your best vibes so we can bring home the bacon!

US Airforce Team out

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