Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Day 3

Apologies for the late post.

The third day of SYWoC 2009 started out extremely light, with a residual harbor hurricane filling from the east. After a postponement of about an hour and a half, which featured an international water fight, the breeze filled in from the west at about 4-6 knots. Racing started around noon, with a W/L and an inshore race on the schedule

Race 7 was a W/L x2, with 0.7nm legs. We decided to work the left, and started pin third. Off the start, we rumbled, pinching off the French Ecole Polytechnique team. We were the left most boat, and tacked on layline, in a slight left shift. The right, however, paid off, and after ducking two boats, we rounded the windward mark in seventh. After a close run, in which we attempted to attack boats ahead, we gained inside overlap on the English team, but gave it way with a poor leeward mark rounding. On the second upwind leg, we played the middle left, taking advantage of pressure that the right did not have, and closed in on the Swiss team. We attacked again downwind, but we were unable to create an overlap at the second leeward mark, and made no passes on the reach to the finish. Team USA finished 7th.

Race 8 was an inshore race, round Ilot Tiboulen to port, then reaching along the north side of the Frioul Islands, before finishing at the Canoubier cardinal mark. We were forced to the right after the start, and had to fight our way back to the left. In the last third of the beat to Tiboulen, we played it as if we were racing J24's, short tacking the shore, looking for the left shift. We closed on the leaders, but were unable to make the pass. On the downwind leg, we again played the shore, but lost to the boats offshore, who had just a bit more pressure. We made gains back, though, on the tight reach to Canoubier, as we were able to roll two teams who ran out of pressure, and passed the Swiss who were caught too low for the reach to the finish. We finished 6th.

After a two hour break on shore, the Race Committee attempted to run the night race, a SYWoC staple. The twelve teams got geared up for a 19 mile race, which had us round the Frioul islands, first to starboard, then back around to port, before finishing outside of Vieux Port. The wind, however, was not on the same plan, and soon after Race Committee took up station, the bay glassed off. After a 15 minute postponement, the RC sent the teams in for an early evening. The night race has been rescheduled for Thursday night.

The day was just one of those days. We didn't seem to have our boatspeed, we seemed to lose ground on every tactical call, and when we did make gains, we would just not quite get enough to make the pass. With 3 days of racing left, we know we have to really push ourselves to be absolutely perfect in order to make gains.

Student Yachting World Cup, Results after Day 3
  1. Italy -- 15 pts
  2. Czech Republic -- 27 pts
  3. Ireland (Cork) -- 28 pts
  4. France (Audencia) --30 pts
  5. USA -- 31 pts
  6. Switzerland -- 32 pts
  7. England -- 39 pts
  8. Scotland -- 46 pts
  9. Ireland (Limerick) -- 55 pts
  10. Wales -- 59 pts
  11. France (Ecole Polytechnique) -- 62 pts
  12. Japan -- 72 pts

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