Ryan Palk

Well the worlds are over, even though it doesn’t feel as though they ever occurred. It was quite a weird regatta with only 8 races being completed which was a bit disappointing.  I had a poor last day to drop off to 20^th overall, so still top 20 in the world but not that great…Beno had a poor day to drop back a few to 32^nd while Klade had an awesome race on the last day posting a 2^nd to jump from 40 something to 25^th! Good effort I say.  Also Tom, had some awesome races in the Silver fleet to finish 8^th.  So we all had our ups and downs.  Even though it is easy for us to say it was a crappy regatta and just forget about, I think it is important to use this regatta as a lesson for a lot of our sailing.  Struggling to get into the racing on the first few days, I lacked the intensity of the rest of the fleet from race 1, not wise in a regatta with only 8 races…  Another lesson I learnt this regatta is that this was a smart sailors regatta, not necessarily a fast sailors one.  With massive tides, massively tight mark roundings and fickle winds, the sailors who took calculated risks, putting there boats in the right places, and executed them properly were the ones to come up with the win.  I think I sailed too conservatively, not taking enough risks, or backing my judgement enough.  The one race where I was happy with my sailing was the last race.  Even though I was hammered off the start by a sailor who was OCS, and decided to come down on me, with his boom getting caught onto my boat, we both stopped behind the fleet at the start, in other words last off the line by a long way.  I sailed my ass off that race, taking risks I thought would pay and they did, passing 40 boats up to 19^th. I think if I raced like that the whole regatta I could’ve secured a top 5, but that’s another lesson learnt for next time…

 

Overall, this worlds wasn’t as satisfying as last year’s, but I haven’t learnt any less.  The racing was tight, and in some of those mark rounding’s I really feared for my fingers as 40 boats tried to get around a mark at the same time! The winner Ben Paton, sailed an awesome regatta as well as fellow Aussie James who took out 5^th, good work James! So all in all, I still had fun, the off-water side of the event was really well organised, and the after party fun! I can take the lessons and other experiences from this regatta and use them in the future.  Now, it is time for a little break in Europe, get rested up, and return to
Australia, to resume Uni, start bulking up for full rig! And start training for Teams racing worlds in September in
Spain.  The potential is intact, I still have to exploit it!!!

good sailing

cheers

Ryan

Top mark rounding

Burman riding through a fountain haha

Well, today we were suppose to have 3 races to make up for the ones we missed from yesterday, which were cancelled because it was too windy and the waves were breaking at the entrance to the harbour, meaning it was to dangerous for us to get out.  It was still a good day tho, chilling with the Aussie boys we went to subway, went bowling and into a few interesting stores!  Today, we end up only doing one race, and being out for 8hrs straight!  the breeze was strong on the way out, then dropped out completely, swung around and it just got weird.  I was in green fleet again with James and Tom, and our fleet was the last to start.   After waiting for the first 3 races to go, the breeze did some weird things, and the races that were on were abandoned.  Damm.  it had now been 4 hours out on the warer and still no racing as we waited for some breeze.  Finally, breeze came from the NW, at about 8knots, with maybe gusts  of 12.  The races took ages to start as each fleet black fagged and general recalled like 5 times.  Klades fleet, (red) had heaps of black flags, i think nearly twenty of the boats in the red fleet were disqualified before the race even began!  We finally got our first race underway at around 330pm.  I had a pretty good start near the pin end, and went into pressure straight away.  I was 5th at top mark and real close to the front.  I had a pretty good downwind to round in 5th with a little gap behind me.  Second upwind was not so good.  The breeze dropped out and swung around and i lost a few boats, rounding the top mark in 10th.  On the reach i lost another and fell to 11th, however i had a good final downwind and reach round the bottom mark in 7th.  The last short upwind was a killer.  the b reeze dropped out to like 2 knots, with about 4knots of tide.  All the boats that rounded the mark first got swept away allowing the fleet to sail up and inside them.  I lost quite a few boats in this last section, losing 9 boats in the space of 100m! So frustrating, but it could of been worse, the guy in first got worked and finsihed way behind me, felt quite sorry for him, as he had sailed so well the entire race to have it snatched away in the last 200m.  Because the waves were quite big for the breeze level, it was perfect sea sickness conditions.  Our Aussie mate Ben Price got real sick, chucking up real frequently.  In his race he was coming 3rd, however had to stop to have a chunder, which made him drop back too, felt sorry for old Beno too.  the last races for today were abandoned cause there was no wind, or not enough anyway.  A big thanks to the US sailing team for the tow in, cause i still would of been out there now!  Otherwise having fun still have climbed up the rankings  a little bit, not really worrying ab out that at the moment just concentrating on sailing well and putting together some nice races. Hoping for a fun day tomorrow too!  So very sore now, being in the same curled up position all day has left us with really sore backs, but we’ll be sweet. 

You just see my sail at the left! yippeee