Day 1 of Racing in Holland

Jen here,

Well, day 1 of the Delta Lloyd regatta is down and it was a doozy!  The breeze was a really nice 22-25knts and we set out on our 3 mile sail to the race course feeling good.  It was a bit dodgy, though, because with trying to weave in and around the other race courses, it took us a bit longer than we anticipated to get to the course and so our warm up time was quite minimal.  Nonetheless, we had a great first start and the boat felt high and fast throughout the first race.  Hmm...it all would have been terrific if we'd gone the right way!  We didn't loose out too much, though, and rounded the top mark in 9th place.  Unfortunately, we had a bit of an altercation with a Chinese boat, and had to do take penalty turns on the downwind.  We finished the race in 20th but were generally happy with our performance within the race.
Ironically, the second race scored us a better result with a 17, but we were much less satisfied with our sailing.  The boat seemed sluggish and it was difficult to find the grove upwind.  We also enjoyed two fairly fantastic capsizes, first on the start line at about a minute and a half to go (yours truly didn't ease enough vang when she bore away).  No worries, we got the boat up and off the line.  The second capsize was right into the finish reach where we got a bit cheeky and decided to fly the kite in on a reach.  We figured, hey the top boats did it! Aaand, we practised reach sets all last week with Bunny in England...I'm sure it'll be just fine!  Well, let's just say our pride suffered a bit on that one!

Things are coming along well, though, and we're pleased with our progress in breeze over last year.  Tomorrow is set to be a light day, so the new challenge will be shifting back into light air sailing after training in breeze for the past two weeks.

Cheers!
Jen