Today was the third day of racing in Los Angles. It was a long and hard day of sailing for both skipper and crew. In the first race, we didn’t have a very strong start after getting pinched off and rolled by a boat from the Netherlands. We tacked away, and then all of the sudden, Blair’s trap line snapped sending him into the water. Luckily we didn’t flip, but we were put into a strong last place because it took us a solid couple of minutes to make a quick repair before we could take off again. We ended up 40th in the race.
In the second race, I was still frustrated about the finish of the race before and went for an extremely risky pin end start. We punched out and rounded the top mark in 10th. We grinned away at boats, and then when we were sailing downwind, we sailed into the back of a huge wave and went from 20 knots to 0 in a matter of seconds. Blair flew forward and broke the line (called a chicken line) and flew forward into the beam. Luckily we didn’t flip, but we lost one boat from that event. We kept grinding and rounded the last gate in 4th. We managed to hold off the two boats behind us until about half way when all of the sudden we slowed down. We did our best to hold them off, but we lost two boats on the last reach. On the last up wind, a boat came in from the left and passed us, putting us in 7th for the race. Still an amazing finish for a word championships.
The last race was a similar story with the start, but Blair and I don’t know what happened in the race to put us so far back. The only thing I could think of is that going around the last reach mark, we had a few boats pass us since we overstood, but it doesn’t seem like the 6 boats that we lost passed us there. We ended up 22nd overall in the last race.
We are still learning a lot and the people in this fleet have been more than open with information about new ways to rig the boat and to offer some suggestions about our performance when back on the beach. I love sailing cats and am so excited that this is my life for the next few years leading up to Rio in 2016!
http://www.abyc.org/upload/2012_F18_World_Championship2.html#silver
You can read a little more about my efforts to become the best Catamaran sailor in the country and qualify for the 2016 Olympics.