Silver Day 1

Battled today in a shifty, blustery 10-22kt NW'ster out in Weymouth Bay. We hit some good shifts at times and stayed upright, but continue to be plagued by little things that we need to work on to put together at good race at this level.

We found our bridle was off to one-side and was part of the reason we were having height on starboard. We also watched the gold fleet racing on the big screen and have figured that we are too far forward in the boat going upwind, so that is something else we will try tomorrow when going upwind in the breeze. Also another thing hampering us today was our spinnaker pole was not getting far out enough and hence were not able to get a sufficiently tight spinnaker luff, which made it harder to carry in the breeze and also less efficient VMG downwind. We believe the reason for this was because I tied the spinnaker tack too tight and prohibited the pole from reaching its full extension. Live and learn. The other thing we are still working on is our communication amongst ourselves in the boat in the heat of the moment. It is one thing when everything is relaxed and the boat is going slow, but it is a whole different deal when the breeze is up and we are trucking along and dealing with converging boats and current on the race course! This will come with time as we adjust to sailing with each other and to being in such a machine at such speeds.

We are looking forward to our boat handling training which we will be doing after the event at the venue - in these boats boat handling is the name of the game! After this event, we hope to be more prepared for our next event which will be Miami OCR in late January.

Also a big thanks to Paul Hiles for watching us today and observing the racing and offering an interesting perspective on the racing. He trooped it out in a cold coachboat all day for us! Thanks Paul. We continue to remain indebted to you for all your work for us! We look forward to him watching us tomorrow as well. It also allowed him to see us in action and gain some understanding of the "beast" we are trying to tame! He was awed by the boat's performance and called it "a F-1 Ferrari". He said it is like no other type of racing and people really need to watch this level of racing to grasp how tough it is. He watched the gold fleet race too and said everyone was having issues and it was just a matter to get through it ASAP and get back up to speed. That's what we have to keep in mind, as we continue to battle with the boat.

Keeping on the good fight,
Zander

Racing concludes for us tomorrow.