Monday, July 12, 2010

July 12 - End of Day 1

After being postponed on shore for 3 hours, the Race Committee sent us out for a 4 pm start. The slipway (that's ramp to us North Americans) was PACKED with boats but we had moved our boat onto the ramp at 9 am so we were at the front of the queue. There was a bit of wind when we launched and for the next 15 minutes, and then it totally shut off. With 4 - 5 knots of current all the coach boats had to drive forwards in order to keep us beside the Race Committee. We sat around in no wind and laughed witht our coach Dave, who was wearing our Canada flag and practicing using "eh" correctly in a sentence. This was nice, but the rather ominous black clouds to the SW were getting closer. The Race Committee finally cancelled the racing for the day at around 4.30; and the cloud was close! We towed back in at high speed and managed to get our boat up and almost into its spot when the squall hit. 30 knots of wind and torrential rain for about 10 minutes. We were very lucky that we had gotten in so quickly - many teams were still on the slipway with their new sails being flogged, and several boats were capsized in the entrance of the harbour and had to be rescued. A Greek team broke their mast as the boat capsized right as they entered the harbour under tow; with no mainsail up the boat turtled and the mast struck the bottom. Hopefully they will be able to get their equipment replaced for tomorrow. The start time has been moved an hour earlier for tomorrow and hopefully we will get in some racing.


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