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Well, that put us back in the pack in 13th. We passed one boat on the remaining reach, then passed two more boats on the first run. At the leeward mark, we tacked right away and headed to the favored left, which put us in front of the Greeks and French and into eighth place. But we didn’t catch anyone on the last run and that was our finish.
 The 49ers were back on the water today after a day off and the US sailors scored a 5-1-5. |
Race 2 We had a few postponements while the race committee tried to catch up with the left-shifting wind. The first start try was a general recall. On the second one, we got off in the middle of the line but not well enough to hold our lane. We had to tack out, but came back left and ate dirty air into the left corner. This was probably the best we could do, so we rounded the top mark in 14th. No fouls this time though. The reach was pretty tight, so most people did not set spinnakers. We held off our spin set until midway down the reach, then had a good set and passed Finland to leeward and Estonia and Italy to windward.
We went down the run and had to defend high and got passed by five boats that went low, but we stayed clear on the last part of the run and passed three back.
We tacked left again once we were going upwind and went past the lay line. This worked better and we passed three boats to move into 10th. On the last run, we worked past the Spanish and finished ninth. All in all a pretty poor day. We hope things change. The schedule calls for us to sail on the offshore course again tomorrow. That’s it for now.
Martha Mason's Olympic Commentary This may be the Olympics, but you'd hardly know it from the amount of excitement outside the sailing venue. There are no food stalls, no T-shirt vendors, no one selling pins or hats, no parking lots, no obvious spectator boats—in fact, nothing to imply that this is one of the world’s most high-profile sailing events. Even out on the water, the kind of hype that TV viewers are seeing in the swimming and biking events just isn't present for the sailing. Yesterday, in perfect viewing conditions, there were only about 10 or 15 spectator boats watching the Solings, along with about 30 individual inflatables holding coaches and officials, and a small handful of police boats. After the day’s racing, everyone converges on the CYC for an after-sailing libation and some race analysis, and the mood is very upbeat. Yesterday's main topic of discussion was the fault in the spinnaker material for the 49er class. The sails are brand new and were imprinted with the flag of each country. Unfortunately, something in that printing process is breaking down the resin material in the sail, and the races have been postponed until new spinnakers are either found or made. |
