Auckland, NZ
February 18, 2008

I won another race today on Day Three of the Singapore Airlines Sail Auckland 2008 regatta but before I did that, I posted finishes of ninth and 16th. The 16th became my throwout race and I remain in third

Break between races

The breeze on the Waitemata Harbour was still out of the southwest today, but lighter and that made things even trickier. I’m treating this event as a warm-up for the Worlds later this month and I was concentrating on my starts and was pleased with my performance in that area.

I managed to put myself into a couple of unfortunate corners today In the first race I was doing well after a good start but a big shift rewarded those on the right while I was out on the left. From there I was able to climb back to ninth at the finish. The second race is one I’d like to forget. I again had a good start but got stuck in a bad spot on the reach and lost a lot of boats when I couldn’t get free. I made some gains at the end but finished 16th. I came back from that determined to do better and put the bow down and was first at the first weather mark of the third race and stayed in front for the rest of the race.

Morning preparations - Lasers ashore and coach RIBs at anchor

Tomorrow we’re expecting different conditions, a light easterly breeze for the last race of the series followed by the double points Medal Race for the top ten boats. Nothing is certain with one more fleet race remaining but Sari and Lijia have pretty much locked up the Gold and Silver Medals from this regatta so I’ll be concentrating on defending my third place for the Bronze Medal.