Friday 14 September 2007

Bad Day At Black Rock

So I've managed to migrate my terrible starts in crits to sailing. Sailing has way different starts to cycling, but the common thread is that I have recently been bad at both.

First, I should say that this regatta is being sailed at a very high level. Call it equivalent to a fairly big Euro Continental event, but not quite a ProTour level race. There are a lot of big time dudes out there.

We had three races today. In the first, we had a bad start and climbed back into the mix only to get pushed back through a couple of bad circumstances, some of our own making, some not.

During race 2, things were going great for us. We were fast and smart, and were in the top 4 or 5 at the last mark, having been in the mix the whole time. Unfortunately, we decided to throw our spinnaker in the water instead of into the air at the hoist, ran it over, ripped the hell out of it, and finished last. Oy. Very dissapointing, especially since we were doing so well when it happened.

In race 3, I made a tremendous unforced error and started us prematurely. This meant that while everyone was headed off to the first mark, we were going back to restart. Bad news. Really, a rusty move on my part, rustiness and bad timing. We sailed well from there, but when you are sailing against world champions and Olympians, no one is giving any free passes and we passed some boats but lingered toward the back the whole time.

Despite all of that, we managed to have a fun time and not crash into anyone else, which is treated quite a bit more harshly than in cycling. Basically, when two boats touch at least one will be disqualified from that race. There will be a bunch of boats eating DSQ's from fender benders today.

We'll get back at it tomorrow and try to climb the ladder.

Being back in Newport with some good friends makes me tremendously home sick. It was a beautiful day, and just being around a town which I lived in and loved for so long has been a lot of fun.

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