Sorry for the slight delay but it was a long night last night, finally getting to sit down for dinner at 10pm!
After a wait onshore for breeze, group C started the day off in a light southerly breeze and it wasn’t until after 4pm that we were out into the boats to complete our round robin. Our final four races were against Skudina (RUS), Barkow (USA), Bossard (FRA) and Le Berre (FRA) and all started with fairly unconventional starts but all wining starts for us. Drawing a penalty against Skudina’s crew pre start meant round the course we were able to keep close and low risk to take the win. Unfortunately that was also all we needed to do in our second race against Barkow after giving her a penalty pre start and leading around the top mark, however a mistake by me towards the bottom of the run equalled out the penalties and lost us the lead… an expensive mistake as we were never able to make up the distance again before the finish.
With eight boat round robins as we have in our first round, every match is crucial because the only way to guarantee qualifying through to the gold fleet is not to loose any races. The next two races against the French teams were therefore must wins for us. In both we controlled the pre start from entry to to start gun (and even hoisted our spinnaker for one!). A slight mistake against Bossard lost us the control over the first beat however a strong run where we just broke the overlap with her in time to round the leeward mark in front gave us control and the ability to extend and take the win. Settling down again we made our lives a bit easier for ourselves in the final race against Le Berre’s team making her stop dead in the water at the start gun, and gaining on every leg to take the win and second place in our group.
From here the top two from each group qualify directly to the gold fleet (a seeding round before the quarter finals). The 3rd and 4th place finishers from each group go through to a repechage, from which the top two teams will make it through to make up the last two quarter finalists.
Today’s forecast is for much more wind and currently all fleets are waiting ashore in about 25knots. The breeze is meant to drop throughout the day so hopefully the repechage group will be sent out soon for their first three flights followed by three flights for us in the gold fleet. We are certainly looking forward to racing in wind and waves!
Lucy x
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