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Kiel, Germany
June 26, 2008
A fickle and unpredictable right shift complicated things during three races at the Grade 1 Kieler Woche Regatta today. The long day proved tiring for all of us. I found myself fighting to get back into contention in all three races but places of 8-1-3 lifted me into fourth place overall.
 Downwind practice
Today, the wind had reversed and was blowing off the cliffs, completely in the opposite direction from yesterday. It was shifty and blowing 13-15 knots with gusts into the high teems. Our blue fleet had the second start which provided an opportunity to watch and analyse the yellow fleet’s moves but each time my first beats didn’t play out as I’d planned.
I had a decent start to leeward of the fleet in the first race and had planned to lead out to the left hand side of the course. Unfortunately, the wind started to shift right and continued further right up the beat. As a result, I rounded the first mark quite deep. After that, I fought hard and battled back to eighth at the finish.
In race two, the pin end of the line was quite favored and I started there with a couple of other boats. We looked great off the line, tacked and were crossing everyone until the right shift showed up again and put us back in the fleet. My first mark rounding was as bad as the previous race, but I managed to pass boats on each subsequent leg. On the last run I closed a huge distance on Sophie de Turckheim from France and finished just ahead of her in second place on the water. The first boat to finish had been black-flagged at the start so I was the race winner.
 Between races
The final race of the day was both the windiest and the lightest. It started windy and again the pin end was favored. Knowing the trend the past couple of races, I started up the line a bit, but still had a great lane to head back across the fleet. I tacked and headed right for the next big shift. At least that’s what I thought. For once, the right wasn’t as strong as it had been, and boats to the left of me and up on my hip wound up inside of me and I rounded the first mark in about 13th. I sailed a good downwind leg and rounded the leeward mark in seventh. But I wanted a good finish so I hiked hard and played the course pretty well to catch two more boats upwind. I lost one boat on the next downwind leg, but closed the gap on the pack in front of me. I rounded just behind them at the leeward mark, went high on the reach to sail over them and got to the next mark in third. On the shifty last beat, I was a little nervous about losing a few boats as we were all pretty close together, but I stuck to my guns and sailed my race and crossed the line in third.
Overall I moved up to fourth. China’s Lijia Xu is still in first place. Sari Multala from Finland moved up from fourth to second, while France’s Sophie de Turckheim logged 2-2-1 finishes to jump from 11th up to third overall, just two points ahead of me. Tomorrow we begin Gold Fleet racing with three races scheduled in similar conditions. I’m looking forward to racing against all the top seeds in these conditions to see how I fare. You can follow the full Kiel Week Laser Radial Results here.
As always I want to acknowledge my sponsors Carmeuse and K-Swiss for supporting my campaign for Olympic Gold in Qingdao.
Sail hard
Anna |
