Today was the practice race. We launched at 1 o'clock to get a few hours training in before the 3 o'clock start. During the training drills we did before the start all seemed fine, upwind speed was good across the range of conditions we were sailing in, and downwind speed felt pretty good bearing in mind the very old spinnaker we were using.
We sailed over to our race course which is a very very long way away, 20 minutes flat out reaching to be exact! And did all our pre-race checks. We all know that everyone pushes the line in the practice race but today was just ridiculous. I don't think i had even got the 15 seconds on the count down and the fleet had already gone. On the plus side the build up to the start went really well, learning from our Palma experience we were right on the front row.
The conditions during the race were very fickle and hard to read, the breeze was mainly light, and our up wind boat speed was really good. Downwind was tricky we need to get better at fining the pressure and I don't think the old spinnaker helped either.
That said all the boat handling maneuvers went smoothly and we were taking not losing boats all the way around the course.
We are now ready and set for racing tomorrow and i'm really pumped up and raring to go. The forecast is light for these first 2 days but we will have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.
Check for a Day 1 update tomorrow!
TP