Ft. LauderdaleApril 28, 2008I'm so sorry for the delay in this wrap up of the Semaine Olympique Francais regatta. My computer broke on Friday night on my way home to the USA and I finally got it back up and running today. Unfortunately I lost my whole hard drive. Anyway, I can now give you a debrief of the regatta. The regatta ended very well and I finished 2nd overall after a very tight medal race.Sailing in on Day 3 of Hyeres (the 30kt day)You got the reports up through the first day of gold fleet racing, and then a summary of how I did overall. The second day of gold fleet racing had similar conditions to the day before with a little less wind and a lot more chop. You could definitely compare the conditions to China. We sat around for most of the day waiting for the wind to settle down and fill in. Around 1:30pm, it started to cooperate and we were sent out on the water around 2pm. We started our first race at about 3pm in light conditions. I had a great start and sailed a good first beat rounding the first mark in about 12th place. I passed one boat on the reach and then the wind shifted and so the downwind leg was instead a broad reach, so no passing was really possible. However, I sailed a great second beat and passed 5 more boats to finish in 6th place in the race. After an initial scare of being OCS after a number that was one digit off from mine was posted on the race committee OCS board, I later saw that that number was actually a real number in my fleet. The second race took a lot of work to finish 5th. I started and had a good start. I sailed out to the right hand side of the course where I had planned to go. Well, lets just say it didn't work out so great and I rounded the top markin 31st with 8 boats behind me. I didn't panic too much because I knew that I still had a very good drop race of an 11, so at worst I would be counting an 11 for the race. But with a lot of scanning the other fleet sailing on our course I decided that the right really was going to work on the second beat and it did. I rounded the weather mark in 5th place which was where I finished the race.
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