Day 3

The day started postponed as we awaited for the cold front to pass through and the weather to stabilize. Breeze ranged from 7-22 kts (although 30 was reported on the R/C boat), with most of it in the 10-15kt range out of the WSW-WNW. This was an unstable direction on the race course today because it was blowing offshore and because the jet stream had dipped down here and ushered in a cooler airmass, removing the entrenched tropical clime which we have had recently.

The highlight from the day was being 8th and 6th at the 1st weather mark roundings of the first two races of the day. This despite lackluster speed...
In both these races, we were able to get a lane off the line and hit the first major shift of both of those beats. We were also doing pretty well on the downwinds, hitting shifts and holding our own. We had a slight hiccup with our spin halyard which uncleated at two key moments, thanks to a line stuck under the halyard near the cleat. This was kinda a freak thing, but an example of how many things can go wrong in a given 49er race. Tomorrow we will cut the tail of the main halyward tweaker to avoid this!

The lowpoint on the day came from the Greeks who decided (they didn't see us apparently) to try and cross us as we approached the leeward mark on starboard. We had to make evasive maneuvers (crash gybe) to stop our boat from a dangerous collision with their bodies and boat. Just think a joust against carbon pole traveling at 18kts aimed right at your torso...not a happy thought. The Greeks were very happy we avoided the collision and spared them. However, it sent us swimming and us flaming out of our best race of the day. We were in 10th/11th at the time and the flip put us a mile behind them. The Greeks spun a circle and still finished 11th...We protested them regardless and we ended up with average points (17th). A little frustrating, but it is how it goes sometimes. We were cool with the Greeks after the protest and it was not a personal thing to protest them after they spun, we did it to get some of the points back that we lost in the incident.

Again, we feel we are doing many things right and that we just need to be patient with our older boat (4th oldest in the fleet). We are in 16th at the moment and 9 points from our goal of mid fleet (14th). We look forward to two more days of racing on Biscayne Bay. A light to moderate North/North Westerly is forecast for the rest of the event, which should provide different conditions than the past few days.

-Zander