Hyeres, France
April 23, 2008

Today was the start of Gold fleet racing. We had two and a half races today. I had some good finishes with a 7th and a 3rd place and was winning the race at the time it was abandoned.

The day started with a westerly wind at around 8 – 10 knots. The first race I had a good start, but couldn’t tack away to the right hand side of the course, which was the preferred favored side of the first leg. I ended up playing the shifts in the middle of the course. Although I was looking ok for most of the first leg, the fleet all seemed to get to the mark at the same time with the group on the right side having the slight advantage. I rounded in the high teens, but with the fleet tightly packed and with a turn of very good downwind speed and tactics, I rounded the leeward mark in 9thplace. Still faced with finding a clear lane and not being able to control where I wanted to go to gain the most, I lost a couple of boats up the next leg. With another good downwind performance I finished in 7thplace. 

The next race I capitalized on another great start and picked my way through the shifts to round the weather mark in 5thplace. By the end of the downwind leg I assumed 1stplace. After a short while I looked back to see what the fleet was doing and couldn’t find them where they normally should have been. What I did see were boats with their sails set on the opposite side than mine thinking it was the Silver fleet and the Gold fleet had somehow magically disappeared. I finally realize that was our fleet and was bringing in a new wind from the opposite direction. Because the wind was filling 180 degrees from the original direction, the race committee wisely abandoned the race.

We finally started racing again after about 45 minutes of sitting around and waiting for the course to be reset to the new wind direction. With another decent start and the ability to sail the wind shifts at will, I rounded the weather mark in about 7thplace and passed five boats to round the leeward mark in 2nd. I started to head to the left side of the course where there was significantly more pressure, which was working well for a while, but then the right had side got the better of me and five boats got me again at the weather mark. With another three off-the-wind legs I was able to gain and secured 3rdplace.

We have one more day of Gold fleet racing where the race committee will try for three races before we compete in the double points medal race on Friday which will determine the winner.

 You can see the results here. Semaine Olympique Française Website – http://sof.ffvoile.net

I would like to thank Carmeuse and K-Swiss for their continued support of my campaign.

Sail hard,

Anna