Day 3 – Tuesday 6 March

We woke to another typical March Miami day – blue sky, a few high clouds and quite breezy.

There was one important matter sort out, before setting sail. Last night as we were packing the boat up, Patrick tripped over a hole in the concrete area in the boat yard, fell over - and grazed all the skin off his knee. (Please note: this was before the Bacardi party). So this morning we had to find some bandages and cover the knee up, before changing and getting ready to sail.

For this regatta all the boats are craned in and out each day. You have the fun of being your own crane operator. Here is a photo of Georgina (bow 01) being hoisted in.

And a photo looking back at the hoists in the US Sailing Center and towards the Coral Reef Yacht Club. Bow 87 is Hamish Pepper (NZ), the current World Champion. This week his crew is David Giles (Aus) (holding the boat). DG is HP's coach, and won a bronze medal in the Olympics in Atlanta.

We set off at our usual time - 10:15. There was a force 2-3 breeze on the way out - NNE. Here we are sailing past the Coral Reef Yacht Club where some of the boats are kept.

Here we are sailing out

And a view of downtown Miami in the distance - to the North of the sailing area.

We sailed out alongside Mateusz Kusznierewicz. We don't know him, but I think he won a gold medal in the Finn class in the Atlanta Olympics. This photo shows how we rake the mast forward going downwind. The mast has a roller or a slide at the bottom to help increase the angle of the rake.

We arrived at the starting area at 11:20 for the 12.00 start and set the boat up. This means we set the upper and lower backstays up to the position we expect to use for the beat. We also set the TackTick compass up by pressing one of the buttons, sailing on one tack for a while until the compass tells us to tack, and then sailing on the other tack until the compass decides it knows where the wind is coming from. After this the compass tells you whether you are being lifted or headed. The system works quite well, provided there is no permanent wind shift. On the run it tells you whether you are sailing above or below the wind angle as set on the beat. Here is a photo.

The wind strength rose a little, so we did a practice first beat. All was OK. Yesterday, it paid to head to the left on the first beat and the right on the second. Conditions today were similar, but with the wind more to the East - Michael felt it was in the position where it was shortly before the shift to the right on the second beat yesterday. We therefore thought that the right side of the course would be our best bet.

After a short postponement, we started in 12 knots of breeze. We started far to the right of the line, about 5 boats down from the Committee Boat. A reasonable start, with one boat coming up fast underneath us. After 20 seconds, we saw the chance to tack off on to port – which we did - and off we headed to the right. We were going where we wanted to go at least.

Almost immediately we were in clear air – and (as we all know) this makes sailing a lot more fun! Two other boats had tacked off shortly before us – Freddie Loof, of Sweden (2 times world champion and number one ISAF ranking Star sailor), and a boat from Argentina. So below us on port there was Sweden and below them Argentina.

Michael turned to see who was above us and on port. He could see Croatia, and above them Hamish Pepper.

So we had one world champ below us and another above! In these situations, it is critical to hold your lane. This means you must sail no lower than the boat below and at least as fast as the other boats. If not, you will be spat out the back. This is why the top teams spend a lot of time tuning alongside other boats. They need to be sure their boatspeed is good. Our tuning this year consisted of a very helpful 30 mins with David Howlett on the Saturday! We tried to set the boat in the way he had advised from his coach boat.

Boat for boat, we didn’t seem to be any faster or slower than Loof – we were lifted and we seemed to be ahead of him. Then we were headed and he pulled away. The good news was that we continued to be headed – and Loof just wanted to go further and further out to the right. Michael: “Freddie must know what he’s doing – let’s keep going!”

Eventually we tacked back on to starboard and headed for the windward mark. Although we had to put in a few extra tacks, we were generally lifted up to the mark. At one point, we looked to be in 2nd place, behind Argentina. But then the situation changed and we got to the windward mark 5th, behind Argentina, George Szabo of the USA, Freddie Loof and Hamish Pepper of New Zealand. Croatia was immediatly behind us.

Here are some photos - I think the 1st 3 are of us approaching the windward mark for the first time and the 4th is at the end of the second beat. In the first photo bow 07 is Argentina, and we are behind and to the left.

We then went on to the downwind leg – the course today was again beat/run/beat/run/ and a final beat.

Well, we went downwind fine, and rounded the leeward mark also in 5th – followed by a pack of Portuguese, Swiss, Austrian, American, Bermudan, Polish and German sailors in close pursuit. On the next beat, things got a bit tricky – the boats behind chased us hard. Possibly lack of practice, and age (of the boat and of us) told, and we rounded the next windward mark in 15th place. We certainly did not have the boat speed we had on the first beat. 15 years ago we'd have felt more confident of holding our position.

Another run downwind, where again we kept our position and sailed well. We then headed up wind for the final leg. We stayed in 14th or 15th until the final 100 metres or so, when two boats got past us, coming in from different directions. So we finished 16th.

OK, we had dropped 11 places in the race. But it is still a pleasing result for us – especially considering that many of the boats around us are sailing throughout the year, and Georgina is now 16 years old.

Clearly going right on the first beat had been a correct call – Jock Kohlas (who won yesterday after going left) went left again, and finished 44th today.

We then sailed in and packed the boat away. We had a burger in the club and prepared for a Bacardi party.

Here are some of the boats in the US Sailing Center at the end of the day.