Takapuna, Auckland, NZ
March 18, 2008

We had tons of sun on the Hauraki Gulf yesterday at the 2008 Laser Radial Women's World Championship but wind was in short supply. The yellow fleet had a relatively short day of it, but our blue fleet took nearly 12 hours, from rigging up our boats to bedding them down, to complete two races.

My results were kinda ordinary, with a 33rd in the fourth race of the series followed by a 13th in the fifth. In between, the committee abandoned an early version of the fifth race when the leaders were on the last run and I was placed ninth.

We have split into gold and silver fleets for the last two days of racing and after discarding my OCS from Saturday, I’m now in 18th place overall with a 6-(OCS)-1-33-13 score. Lijia Xu from China is the series leader. Sarah Steyaert from France is second and Evi van Acker from Belgium is third.

We got to the boat park at 0830 hours for an anticipated 1000 hours start but sat and waited for wind for an hour before going on the water. When we started, I got off the line well and sailed a textbook-perfect race for 200 meters, then tacked onto port and into a left shift. It kept going left and the boats up to weather would get the puff but those of us to leeward wouldn’t. I was very deep at the windward mark and finished 33rd as the breeze got lighter, shiftier and puffier at the end.

I was a little disappointed with the first race of the day and determined to do better. Jo Aleh from New Zealand developed a four-minute lead in the second race and I had worked my way up to ninth when the breeze completely died on us and the race committee called it off.

We came ashore and waited until the sea breeze came in at around 1700 hours and we went out and tried again, starting just before 1800. We had a new set of conditions to figure out and I worked the right side of the course for the first beat and the left on the second to pick up some places and finished 13th for an OK end to a bad start to the day.

We are starting early again tomorrow, in hope of getting off another three races. The forecast calls for a continuation of dominating high pressure conditions with light and variable breezes and the hope of a sea breeze in the afternoon.