Day 2

Epic conditions at the Student Yachting World Cup. Temperatures hovering around 70 degrees, cloudless, sunny skies and a solid NNW breeze between 8 and 15 knots provided for great racing. Race Committee scheduled three races, starting off with an inshore race, as the breeze was forecasted to die as the day went on.

Race 1 (4th of the event) was a 9 mile inshore course around the Frioul Islands. Our gameplan for the start and first beat was to start pin third and work the left side, which had better pressure. We lost our lane soon after the start, and bailed to the right. We hooked up with a nice righty pressure and tacked on layline, rolling over the French Audencia team, and rounded second behind Team Italy. Our run to the cardinal marks Canoubier and Sourdaras was stellar, and we pulled away from the third place team and closed on the Italians. The tight beam reach down the south side of the island featured multiple spinnaker douses and sets, and the top two spots stayed the same, while the Swiss took over third. On the short beat to Ilot Tiboulen, the Italians pulled away, while the Swiss gained on us, before a perfect lee-bow tack gave us a bit of breathing room for the final broad reach to the finish. The Italian team finished first, Team USA second, and the Swiss third. We were very pleased with our boat handling for the race, while we needed to focus on dialing in our upwind trim and starts.

Race 2 was a W/L twice around with 1nm legs. Again we wanted to start pin third and work the left, but our lane closed off immediately after the start and we were forced to bail right. Our boatspeed, along with a slight right shift, allowed us to round the windward mark in fourth, just behind Team England. We nailed the spinnaker set and immediately rolled the English, and had our sights set on the French in second. We closed slightly down the run. Up the second beat, the fleet split, with the two leaders heading to the left, and the boats close behind heading right. We played the beat defensively, choosing to stick with the boats behind, only attacking the lead of the top two boats in the last third of the beat. We took a bit more out of the French team's lead, and held position down the run, finishing third.

Race 3 was again a W/L x2 with 1nm legs. Our gameplan was the same as the first two races - start pin third and play the left. We started 4 boats up from the pin, and finally crushed the start. We rolled the boats to our left, minus the Czechs, while pinching off the U. of Limerick (Ireland) team, and closing significant gauge with the Swiss and Italian teams to windward of us, causing them to tack and head right. We caught a left shift and tacked, basically on layline, beating all boats to our right and we were only behind the Czechs. The shift fell out, allowing the Italians and Swiss to catch back up. We wanted to win the race at the windward mark, and so we attempted to lee-bow the Italians, only to find out that they were shy on layline, which put us even further from layline, with only about 30 yards to the windward mark. After a big duck and an aggressive call to tack inside the Italians, who had also ducked the Swiss, we compounded the already bad situation by hitting the windward mark. We did our penalty turn on the offset leg, which dropped us from fourth to tenth. Down the run, we gybed inside early, catching pressure and a right shift, allowing us to claw back into eighth around the leeward mark. On the second beat, we played the right-hand side of the course, while the boats ahead of us tacked and headed left. We caught a few positive shifts, passing three boats before the windward mark. We made more plays down the second run, catching right up to French and Czechs, but couldn't pass them on the short reach to the finish.

The last race taught us a valuable lesson for the racing against the teams here. We need to rely on our boatspeed in tight situations, in order to capitalize on the mistakes of other team, while minimizing our own mistakes. The learning curve at this event is very steep and we still have room for lots of improvement in every aspect of our racing.

Student Yachting World Cup - Overall Results [Drops are in ()]

1. Italy -- 8 - 1- (9) - 1 - 1 - 2 = 13
2. Switzerland -- (OCS 13) - 4 - 4 - 3 - 6 -1 = 18
3. France (Audencia) -- 2 - (10) - 3 - 8 - 2 - 3 = 18
4. USA -- (OCS 13) - 2 - 7 - 2 - 3 - 5 = 19
5. Ireland (Cork) -- (7) - 5 - 2 - 4 - 4 - 6 = 21
6. Czech Republic -- 5 - 6 - 1 - 6 - (9) - 4 = 22
7. England -- 1 - (11) - 6 - 5 - 7 - 8 = 27
8. Scotland -- 3 - 8 - (10) - 7 - 5 - 7 = 30
9. Ireland (Limerick) -- 9 - 3 - 5 - (12) - 8 - 9 = 34
10. France (EP) -- 6 - 7 - (11) - 11 - 10 - 11 = 45
11. Wales -- 10 - 9 - 8 - 9 - (12) - 10 = 46
12. Japan -- 4 - 12 - 12 - 10 - 11 - 12 = 61

Tomorrow's conditions are looking very light, between 0 and 6 knots. We shall see how the forecasts hold up to reality. The night race is scheduled for tomorrow night.


Team URI/USA