Anthony and Cy

The last few days.

Family and Friends,

Well we didn’t quite make it. The Japanese and Croatians get the final two spots from silver.

Sorry for not updating as the end of the regatta, things got really busy and the internet was very intermittent. We finished up the last few days in sliver fleet with some all around finishes. The conditions were mostly medium light but VERY shifty. Are results matched the wind and were all over the place. We had some great races in which some included great come from behind finishes and some races where we just plain old got hammered.

The last day was a no go. We went out in a medium breeze out of the unusual east with a plan to sail the final two races. The wind quickly faded and we moved our tuning down to the “base” setting. The crowd set up with a huge pile up at the boat but we saw a favorable current rip and more wind to the left so we set up near the pin with one of the top Polish and English boats. Right at about 20 seconds the wind went hard left and all three boats got good starts flopped on to port and were doing well. The problem was that we were laying the top mark and I had that feeling that the RC would abandon the race. Sure enough about half way up the beat the mark boat came by waving the blue and white checkered flag and we all went back to the start line. The wind continued to stay unstable and we sat around for about an hour and a half and they finally called it a day. I was a bit bummed as I wanted us to end on a good note AND we were loosing a three way tie!

We came in a packed up the boat and then went and watched the Medal race were the top ten fight it out in a double points one race final. The seabreeze filled in at 20kts and it was great to watch. We have sense loaded the boat in the US Sailing Team Container which is going to Barcalona next. Cy and I are in Sydney now waiting to get a flight to LAX and finally Boston. I will write a summary of where we stand on the 15 hr flight and post it up here so everyone can get the full picture!

We will have some fantastic photos up soon. Right now they are too big to put up and I need to reduce the file size a bit.

Anthony

Day 3

Ouch was the word of the day. We basically took it on the chin in todays 20+ kts conditions. We were on the outside course and that spelled big waves which is the kriptonite of 49er rookie teams. The door has not shut on us by anymeans. Three of the available spots ended up in gold fleet which for us is now not reachable. The Swedish made it in on a three way tie for the last spot I think.

We will now duck it out with the Croations, Japenese, Finnish Dutch and South Africans.

Today’s conditions were quite spectacular. Almost all teams flipped or pitch poled including the Athens Gold Medalists.

To recap our three races:

Race 1- We got to the starting line fine and dropped the kite and sheeted in at the RC boat to head up wind and check out set up out. We went up wind for about 4-5 mins and started to head back as we had about 10-12 mins left before the start. We survived the bear away and are going downwind w/o the kite. I sitting on the wing and Cy is out on the trapeze. The bow gets close to plugging in a few times but comes up and out of the wave. We survived a few of those until a big one came along and we fully plugged it in. It is kind of a slow death at the start of a pitch pole as the bow dissappears and deck is full of water. At this point sometimes it comes out and other times this is where it turns really bad. Sure enough you feel the boat stop and your body lunges forward. Cy was smart enough to eject when he was only about 5-6 feet in the air. As for me, I am not sure which happened but all i can figure out is maybe i thought i could save it (completely crazy) or the human tendancy to hold on took over. The next thing I know is the boat is vertical standing on the bow and i am on the stern 10+ feet up. I eventually end up in the water an we climb up on the centerboard. Cy tells me that his trap bungee has broken. That was ok as we had a spare in the coach boat. We would get it from her when we got down to the line. Unfortunatly, the wind picked up even more and we could not get down wind and keep flipping or pitch poleing. The sailing instructions state that we must start with in four mins of the gun. We missed that. Out of 27 boats in the fleet only 15 or 16 started.

So we regroup and start the next race and flip twice and are mid fleet at the finish for a 12th. We only made the 10 min time limit by 45 seconds. Sailing instructions state that you must finish with in 10 mins of the first finisher. This is what happed to us in the third race as we made it around the three lap course but not with in the time limit. It was frustrating as we made it around and beat a lot of boats but in our fleet were the World Champs who basically won two out of the three races by a bunch. So when they finished, the RC starts the 10 min countdown. Many teams complained about the time limit and it is supposed to be moved to 15 min.

Sorry for the bad day, forecast looks a bit more to our liking. We are going to put the heat on the top boats and show them what the underdogs can do.

Day 2

Race Fans,

Today was a ok day but not as good as yesterday. We definatly aquired a few points around the course that were not needed. We had finishes of 13,18,6. We did a different schedule today, as we went out in the morning group, did two races then sailed to a different course, waited a bit and then did one afternoon race.

In the morning races, we got side tracked from our game plan of avoiding little boathandling battles and found ourselves in some tight knit racing. We also had some bad luck, the biggest being that we shrimped the kite on a hoist. We had a great top mark rounding with lots of speed and I put the bow down so Cy could hoist the kite. We found ourselves on a huge wave and were going really fast which was great. The problem was, as Cy was hoisting, the kite gets pulled out of the launcher on the bow and gets taken out to the end of the pole. Unfortunetly, the timeing of the kite being halfway there and unstable conincided with us landing at the bottom of the big wave and the luff caught water and we went from about 8-10kts to zero fast! Usually, this is a 1000% gurantee flip over but some how we survived it, got the bow down and the boat under control and Cy just purly muscled the kite up. I am not sure how the block did not pull out of the deck or how Cy didn’t pop a hernia or blood vessel in his neck but the kite came up, and off we went.

The other unfortunate event was a black flag start were the boats around pulled the trigger and I thought we were all too early so we got rolled but they weren’t over. I guess I was just too cautious.

After the small break, we got sorted again and had a great start near the pin end, away from the fuss and sailed a good tricky race to finish 6th.

Qualification wise, we are 3rd of the 14 countries looking for the 5 spots. Brazil an Norway both had good days and are ahead of us. The Finnish, Swedes and Irish are right on our ass so it will be a good fight. Tomorrow is suppoed to be windy so we are going to have to be firing on all pistons. Tomorrow is the last day of qualifing for the fleets, so after tomorrow’s scores are tallied up, we will be split into Gold, Silver and Bronze. Gold will have the top 25 boats in it and we are in 24th!

Its getting exciting!

Day 1

Race Fans,

We had a good day. The finishes were 7, 10, 3 out of a 27 boat fleet. The whole fleet of about 78 boats are split up into three different groups. The composition of each group changes each day. The reason for this is that the fleet is just too big to manage from a Race Comm. point of view. We were placed in the red division and started once the yellow had completed its morning three races. This was good for us because all last night it was blowing in the high 20’s but started to die around 10 when yellow started its first race. There were a few general recalls but finally we were released from the beach and allowed to go out.

Our coach, Elizabeth Kratzig, was out on the water early to suss out the previous races to see what was working and what wasn’t. The current had just switch and was going to be runing full speed (about 2.5kts) on our course. We did a few runs up and down and got our rig sorted.

I won’t bother you with a blow by blow of each race but it was the conditions we like the most. We tried really hard to keep out of trouble and try to maintain long lanes so we wouldn’t have to tack too much. We also tried to keep out of boathandling battles and play to our strengths of light air speed and sailing smart. It work well except one start when I tried to get a little fancy and ended up being late. However, it forced us to the right side which came in strong!

We had a very strong group today with the famously fast Italian Sibello brothers as well as the current world champs from England. We finished with-in 2-3 seconds of the Italians twice and beat the Brits once.
Over all, while it means nothing as we are only 3 races into a 15 race series, we are in 12th. The first page!

Tomorrow we are in the early group and the wind looks to be really unstable so we will see what it brings us.

For all of you that have followed and or supported us, I hope we did you proud today.

The results are not up yet but if you want to have a check, they SHOULD be at:

http://www.sscbc.com.au/?ID=33986

It is 10pm and about 95 degrees!

See ya.

Measurment and Practice Race

Hello All,

Cy and I made it though measurement with no big hassles.  The process for the 49er is pretty simple.  You take all the non fixed stuff off the boat and the mast down.  The measurer then weights the boat to make sure it is not under 94 kilos. If it is, you put lead next to the mast step to get it up to 94.

We had done a little homework in San Diego when we picked up the boat.  The offical measurer was there and he allowed us to do a test weight.  It came out at 93 kg.  So we have the option of putting one kg of lead or doing things to the boat that make it easier to sail and more useful than a chuck of lead.  One of the common things to do add grip tape to the bottom of the cockpit as the original non skid wears out.  We purchased a bunch of skateboard grip and put that down.  We put lots of polish, bow stickers and basically anything to get it up to weight.  It sorta worked as we only had to put on .45kg of lead.  This is great because as the boat is light and we have the extra weight next to the mast step (best place) and as the boat gets older and soaks up water we can take out lead.  There were many new boats here that weighed in heavy.

We have now reassembled the boat and picked out best rig.  We had three to choose from and picked one that we originally bought in Miami a year ago.  A huge thanks to those donors who believed in us from the start and gave us the money to buy that mast in Miami.  We picked the mast as we used it in San Diego when we were there training with our old boat. Towards the end we were able to go quite fast even with the crapper boat we had. So the mast must have been ok. While training here in AUS, we have had our best days with that mast as well.

While on the mast subject, yesterday was quite windy and two out of the three China boats broke their rigs.  They didn’t seem to have any extra, so we sold them our third mast.  Don’t worry though as we have our spare mast ready to go fully rigged and ready to be plugged in if we break ours. The mast design is changing from a two part aluminum composite rig to a three piece all carbon rig after the olympics.  So off loading a rig was a good $ decision as well.

Last night the club hosted the opening ceremonies with the traditional Aussie National Anthem, flag raising of each country and bring in some big names.  The big names were Eddie McGregor who hosts the Aussie version of the game show, Who wants to be a Millionare.  The other more commonly known was Uber Aussie sporting hero, John Bertrand who won the America’s Cup.  He as been out watching the races and has really enjoyed watching us.

Today is the practice race and it is blowing 25 to 30 so we will see what happens.

Last few days before the big event.

Hello all,

The last few days have been nice but the wind has been playing games with us. A huge high pressure moved in to make sure there was plenty of sunshine for the Holiday beach goers. The result for us sailing type has been very long periods of no wind. However, two days ago, it went from zero kts in the morning to about 25-30 in the pm. The change period was almost non existant as all of a sudden it looked like a helicoptor puff on the water and with in 3-5 mins it was dogs off the chains. We made it out but most people came in as it started to get a bit hairy. We saw a team break a mast for the second time in three days. Yesterday was very hot again and no wind. We went out for the only wind of the day in the pm.

Today was the big heat day as it went up to 39-40C and thats is in the high 90’s/100’s. Cy and I went sailing right as it started to get hot and avoided the heat by being out on the water. The bay temp is upper 70’s or lower 80’s so it is very nice offshore. We spent the first hour sailing against the famous Italian brothers who are known for their speed. It was the conditions were we needed a bit of speed help so this long session helped. We did two long beats and runs with them and then joined in on the British squad speed testing. It was two British boats including the world champions and us so it was a great learning experience. We did about an 15 min straight line test and we didn’t loose or gain anything so that was very satisfying. We then joined in on some racing run by the Brit coach that included another world champion from the Ukraine and some Polish. We didn’t win any but on most we were competitive. For me these small practice races with a super quality fleet is the best experience. The days before, the afternoon sessions had races with 35-40 boats and that is a great deal of fun as well. Again we find we are supper fast in the light stuff and are slowing getting better with our medium stuff and have a ways to go in the big wind. However, we have spoken to a number of famously good heavy air teams and asked for pointers. Now we just need some wind to test out the new techniques.

70% of the teams have measurement tomorrow. We are sloted for 10 am on the second, so we will do an early session tomorrow and then start to break the boat apart for measurement and finish up putting all the good regatta gear on the craft. We have practice race on Thur and regatta starts on Friday.

Tonight is our New Years celebration as we are a day ahead of you guys. I thought Newport had lots of laws but the town is basically shut down. No cars or bicycles. No booze and tons of laws for the night. We are going to go over to the Amerian’s house and see what they are up to for the night.

Thats all for now!

Club Photos

Hello All,

The last few days have been really nice as the wind had been light in the am and windy in the pm allowing for two session in different wind conditions. The RC race committee has been running practice races to get us and them ready for the big event.

The club went from basically a ghost town the first week we were here to full occupancy as many Aussie families have traveled down the Mornington Peninsula for holiday break.

Below is a pic of the local YC.

The little blue sail boats are the local kids craft. The are appropriately called “Minnows”. As for space, you can see the issue, there are about 40 49ers on the beach in the photo and we expect 77 as well as 100 29ers AND they aren’t going to allow us to park in front of the club.

Below is a picture of the local Sorrento boat. Not sure what happened as it was only blowing about 15-17 kts.

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Cy’s Australian Journals

For those of you that remember Cy’s journals from Portugal, he has done the same for our adventures here in Aussie. For those of you that have never been blessed with Cy’s prose, it is really funny. He takes all the funny moments of the day and puts it to words. People have let us know how funny these things are. To read them, click on the link for Cy’s Jounrals at the top of the page.

Here is a small sampling:

Sailing in Sydney harbor is such a cool experience. I mean you always see pictures and postcards, of the Opera house, and are in awe, but while sailing we see it every day, and just glance at it like we have seen it so many times before.  I guess we will never appreciate it true majesty, until we are walking in or around it.
Today the wind was up again, but not as consistent. It was blowing from the complete opposite direction, and was very shifty.  But the nice thing about the wind coming from that direction was that it gave the water no chance to build up and steep chop. Very nice clean sailing all day long, that made it more of a tactical game.  The first couple races were not to impressive with a 19th ( I have an excuse for that one) and then a 12th, but then we brought out the A game, and cranked up the tempo a little, pulling off a 6th, and an 8th.   Nothing too exciting really happened on the water other than Anthony almost literally getting killed. And I am not exaggerating, I mean having a spinnaker pole sticking out of his thigh.  Here’s the story! Bear with me.
We had just rounded the leeward mark in about 10th place, and were heading back upwind for the last leg of the course.  On the downwind run was this Australian boat, just flying with the spinnaker up.  Usually if you are going downwind, it is a very good reference that the boats that had just rounded are an indication that you are getting very near your layline.  This was not the case with these guys.  We had all the rights, and they had to keep clear.  Anthony started to YELL, basically for his life “HEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY, HEEEYYYYYYYYY, What the hell are you doing?” The skipper finally sees us, and makes the worst decision ever. He probably would have been able to cross our bow, as we had began to slow the boat to provide him with more room to do so, but instead he goes for a gybe.  Remember that the closing distance is so fast in these boats. Within half a second of his gybe I knew there was going to be a collision.  I immediately got off the rail, and dove into the boat, getting out of danger, while Anthony sat back there still hooked in and out on the wire, taking it like a champ.  The guy gybed so close that his spinnaker completely blanketed Anthony, and as they sailed past their leeward shroud snagged Anthony’s shoulder, and sent him flying around the stern of the boat.  Having gotten my weight off the rail, and allowed the wing to raise off the water, this made it possible for the other boats spinnaker pole to graze Anthony ass cheek rather than go right through his thigh.  Now we had flipped over, and instead of quickly rushing to get the boat upright again, we just sat in the water for a couple seconds, and realized that, what had happened was really scary. That was the reason for the 19th place that day

Enjoy!

X-Mas Downunder

Friends and Family,

Yesterday was blow out again as it was really windy. Some braved the conditions only to return with in 10-15 mins.  We took on some longterm projects such as rigging our third mast and making some spare halyards.

For the afternoon, Cy and I split up as he went an spent time with the other young USA teams and I went to the older USA team’s house for dinner.  The dinner was a lot of fun as the Norwegians, Danish and Germans were there.  We had a huge feast and then some minor drinking afterwards.

Todays was our Christmas.  We relaxed this am.  I tried to fix Cy’s shitter bike to make it more ridable and he made some eggs.  We came down to the club and there were a few boats going out who are usually pretty good so we did a quick rig and headed out.  There was extra incentive today to get out early as the flies were at a all time worst.  Words can’t describe how bad they are.  We joined in on some very short course racing with about 5 other boats and did well.  It was later joined by some good teams and things got a little tougher but we still gave hell.  The racing stopped and we did some straight lining vs the Danish, who were breaking in a new boat and the Portuguese.

The highlight of the day was sailing along upwind out on the wire when a group of about 5-6 dolphins went right by us and we were able to look straight down and see them.

Thats all for now!

A little early Christmas Present.

Hello All from the other side of the world!

Today was one of those days were everything was just really nice.  The weather was supposed to be crappy and too windy again but it was sunny and sailable.  Our solid boat work really worked out and the craft is in supper condition with systems running very well.

We finished off some minor work list items this am and went for a sail. We joined in on some racing with a bunch of the other non qualified countries and did well finished 1st in one race and had a few other top 3’s.  This felt good as this is the group of people we need to beat.  It included NOR, JPN, CRO and some other countries.  The conditions were our best ones, semi light air and we had ok speed and good height.  We headed in for a quick lunch and wanted to get back out with the A level guys.  The good guys were running races and we joined in.  There were 14 boats out which included the ISAF ranked #1 Germans as well as the Spanish Gold Medalists,  and the number one USA team.  The first race we missed the start since we were coming from lunch but we only about 10 sec late. We sailed well tactically and finished in the top 8 maybe?  The next race, we had an ok start and went right, got a nice puff from the right and rounded somewhere between 5-7.  The leaders all gybe set to catch the puff that had gone down the right side.  We straight set (bear away) and got a nice puff and header and I looked up and we were laying the gate marks.  The leaders didn’t see this and kept going. So we lead around the bottom gate but had the Gold Medalist Spanish hot on our ass.  We sailed next to them for the second beat and they were a bit faster but we were able to hang on till the top mark.  From there, we saw a nice puff on the right so we gybe set and the Spanish straight set.  Our side paid off luckily and we won the race.  Obviously the race means nothing but it is still a nice boost to win a practice race with such a good group.

The racing was over and we still wanted some more sailing and the wind was starting to blow in the high teens / low twentys.  Two of the other USA teams were still out so we did a big burn downwind in the breeze and we were going so fast.  There is nothing like being fully powered up, in the straps, as low as the trap will go and flat water. It is very close to windsurfing.  We went for about two miles and turned around for the beat back home.   It was a great opportunity for us as the USA teams are good in the breeze which is our weakness.  We experimented with our centerboard height and this was  a big gain for us.  In the past we hadn’t pulled it up.  Were suffering from not being able to ease enough mainsheet when a puff would hit and we would heel over and go slow.  By pulling up the board a bit the boat got a lot easier to manage and we were going a bit better.

So the day was one of the better ones we have had. Boat was working well, nice weather, some light air, some heavy air and no items on the post sail worklist!

Below is a pic if the Spanish coming in after yesterday’s big wind with sails down and coach boat help.