Anthony and Cy

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.