Its starting to warm up and my recent home renovations are almost done - I'm starting to think about sailing again! I missed sending out an update from the Sydney Worlds so I am going to kick off my new blog with that report.
The event was in Manly, on the North shore of Sydney Harbour at the 16ft Skiff club. There isn't a large local 14 foot fleet but to help establish the class in Sydney and because it was a cool venue, the Worlds was hosted there. A little more then 100 showed up for the event, which was more then the organizers expected, this caused some last minute format changes. The two biggest changes were splitting the fleets and eliminating the reaching legs (normally the 2nd leg of the race across the wind). The problem was space, with 100+ boats and a ferry passing through the race area every 20 minutes there just wasn't enough room.
The first day of racing Nick and I were quite excited to get on the water and race - so was everyone else. The fleet we were randomly assigned for the day had a good chunk of the top guys, which was intimidating but fit with our strategy - follow the fastest guys around the course! We had never sailed in Sydney and they had, so we thought this was a safe bet.The first two races didn't go off as smooth as we expected. There were between 50 and 60 boats on a short line and everyone was very aggressive. This caused a number of general recalls (false starts). We found ourselves in the heat of the aggressive guys (remember our strategy!) and during one of the recalls, in the midst of confusion about the time remaining before the start ended up on the wrong side of the starting line. We were over early and the 'black' flag was up (meaning, if you are over early before the signal you are disqualified) . That was not a good way to start a regatta. We weren't the only ones who got a black flag penalty, a former world champion (who we were trying to follow) also was given a black flag. However, not all sailing is won or lost on the water. We knew we were over and accepted our fate, several others felt that the judges made a mistake and protested their results. Their penalties were overturned, but we still had to carry 100+ points!
Day 2 was another hard day of sailing. Again we were randomly assigned a group to sail with, on this day we were in the afternoon fleet. The day had started off nice (as it usually did in Sydney) and got windier and windier. On this day by the time we got out sailing it was blowing over 20 knots with some 30 knots guts. This was as close to being too windy to sail as it gets at the worlds. On the water, it was tough work (luckily I had been going to the gym, regularly - thanks Phil and ExF!). However, it wasn't our day, we had a few gear issues and breakdowns that led to us not finishing the race. Another 100+ point day, ouch.
It was hard to get over the disappointment that I lost the chance to make it to the finals and no hope of a PB which I had been training for. However it was still early in the regatta so there was a chance to save a few good results and have some fun sailing.
After the fleet spli
t into Gold and Silver, we started to feel our sailing kick into top gear. In the rest of the races we were fighting with the top boat and nearly matched for speed. They were a German boat who had a similar fate to us, so it was nice to have some close racing. In the end we placed 4th in Silver fleet it would have been a cool 2nd if we didn't still have to carry the penalty points from the qualifying round.Now starts another season and new goals for the UK 2011 and Toronto 2013 World Championships.
See you on the water.
Chris
