Today was the first day of Canadian nationals in Kingston. It was extremely light all day with winds hitting only around 5 knots. Blair and I got off the dock a little late and had little time to test upwind with other boats before the start. The two of us had confidence that we had set the boat up well enough to stay up towards the front of the fleet.
The first race was one of our best races, but the start and the first upwind were not our best. We went around the windward mark in 5th from last after getting off the line last and forcing to tack away and go out to the right side, which was the wrong side to go to since the right side of the course was so close to shore on the right side. We went out to the right side of the downwind leg with speed and depth on the rest of the fleet. When we gybed and started towards the gate, we had made our way under half of the fleet and passed them while going faster and lower than the fleet to the gate. We rounded the gate in 11th from last or 7th place overall. We then lost a couple of boats on the way back up the course and ended up 12th overall.
The first and last race were very similar, but the second race was much more challenging. After the first race, we adjusted the rig to try to close off the leech of the main sail a little, and after going through 2 legs of the race, we realized that what we had done hurt us more than it helped. Once again we had gone around the top mark in 4th to last, but went around the second mark in last. We quickly changed what we did and put it back to the way it was in the last race. We managed to make up all the distance to the second to last boat and catch up to the next boat before the finish. It was a mistake on both the skipper and crews part, and did our best to make it up as best we could.
In the last race we had a much better start, and had our boat speed back that we had in the first race. We managed to get 11th around the windward mark and picked off boats through out the entire race.
The advantage that we had in the first and last race was that we had amazing speed. The only issue we had was our starts and when we would get up enough speed, Blair would sometimes pinch up and we would lose our speed and have to start over from scratch and get our speed back up. 
The good news is that we are only up here at CORK to give us the opportunity to sail together and start to develop a strategy before we get to Los Angeles for Worlds next month. I think that if we focus on getting a starting strategy down and then keeping our boat speed dialed in we will be able to rock at Worlds.
You can see the results from today’s racing at CORK here: http://www.cork.org/results/2012-results-resultats-2012/#