World championship day4

A bit different wind condition today with a gusty 18-25 knots south-easterly wind. It was raining most of the day thanks to the tropical cyclone Clare that was in the north west of Australia earlier this week. The waves were much smaller as the wind was off shore. For the first time in this championship we also had the long course. It was around 1 hour and 12 minutes for the first, 20 minutes more then the usual course. All the top sailors started at the race committee end. I was the only one that had a really bad start, I manage to recover till the second place in the second part of the first leg thanks to good tactic and speed. Marcus had a good start but he went on the wrong side and lost a lot and came around the top mark around 10th. Matt Hosie was leading at the first mark and today he was very fast (I guess thanks to his new love…). At the second leg I passed Hosie and Marcus was working his way up to the fleet. On the third lap Hosie and I were moving away from the rest of the fleet while the fight for the position between the 3^rd and the 7^th was on fire. Marcus grabbed the third place from Simon Musselbecuase of better downwind speed on the last to reaches.. The last upwind saw Virgilio passing Tim Hill and Paul Green for the 5^th place. At the finish Hosie was quite close to me while Marcus 3^rd was 3 minutes behind and Tim Hill 7^th only 30 seconds behind Marcus. Even if it was around 3.20 the race committee decided not to do one more race and we went inshore.

Tomorrow the sailing condition should be similar with still the tale of the cyclone bringing south east wind between 15 to 20 knots.

Complete result are at the usual link:

http://www.contenderclass.org/aus/freo2006/results_worlds.htm

Ciao Andrea