Ryan Palk

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