Qingdao China - August 13, 2008 - Another very light air day on the waters of Fushan Bay and after a two hour wait for the breeze to settle we only completed one Laser Radial race. I nailed a nice conservative sixth-place finish on a day when favorites were finishing all over the place and I extended my first place overall lead to seven points.

We were out on Course C at noon, ready to practice for an hour before racing the outer trapezoid but the breeze proved to be too shifty for the scheduled 1:00 pm start. It gave us plenty of time to get a feel for wind and current and we even got some starting practice with a couple of attempts at starting races that dissolved into general recalls and abandonment. Finally the committee got us started at 3:15 pm in a very light and very shifty southeasterly breeze.

The left side of the course looked promising but my start at the pin was not very encouraging and I struggled off the line. Eventually I tacked into the middle of the course and began getting my boat speed back up. By now the fleet had split and two thirds of the competitors had gone right while the rest went left.

My plan had been to go left so I elected to follow that route. I worked my way left and had to duck most of the boats on the left side before I got out to the layline. I’d done the right thing and rounded the top mark in tenth place. It was a good comeback.

All the boats that had eventually finished in the top ten had chosen the left side and they were strung out in front of me. It was one of those races where the people who got out in front tended to stay in front. So I set to work picking them off, one by one. I was still tenth at the end of the first run but gained three places on the next beat. I lost one boat on the reach but gained two places on the last run.

I will be sending out daily reports like this but you can also follow the racing live on web-TV at www.nbcolympics.com. You can get leg-by-leg race updates and overall results if you go to http://www.sailing.org/olympics/resultscentre.php and click on Laser Radial Women in the left-hand column.

Until the Olympics are over, you’ll notice some changes in the content of my reports and where they are located on my website. To comply with International Olympic Committee regulations designed to protect its sponsors’ interests, my reports are appearing on my special Qingdao Olympic Blog. The URL for the page is http://www.annatunnicliffe.com/content/blogcategory/29/113/. There is also a link from the home page of my website. The blog page includes hotlinks to official results and competition photos.

Sail hard

Anna