Diary From Qingdao
August 30, 2006
Yngling sailors Sally Barkow, Deb Capozzi and Carrie Howe write:
What do you do when you have a day off from racing? You go
sailing. That’s one thing we did each day during a two-day break in our racing
schedule.
After our morning gym sessions, we got out on the water to continue working on our new ideas as well as establishing a rhythm with the boat and with each other. We’ve been trying a lot of new things, so we changed it up a bit, putting up the sails we used at the Worlds and guess what? We were blazing fast when we lined up with Mandy Mulder’s Dutch boat, which is winning here. We also had a testing session with the second-placed British boat skippered by Helena Lucas.
When we raced today, we faced a different kind of testing. A
short, sharp storm blew through bringing with it fog, rain, big swells, confused
choppy waves and 25-knot winds. This was only the second time we’ve ever had
this particular boat out in these big breeze conditions and this was a chance to
test ourselves and our boat. The only other time we sailed it in heavy air was
in
There was plenty going on out on the water as we worked to optimize the boat for the big change in conditions. Lots of setups and tweaking to do and we got everything sorted out and finished just in time to start the first race. We were pretty fired up for this one but we hadn’t had time to do much researching around the course or checking the shifts.
Our testing work during the two-day break paid off. We had an
OK start in the first race but worked the left side of the course and got on
the wrong side of a right shift and had to work out way back into contention.
We made some big gains downwind and our boat speed picked up as we settled down
but we were always a little off phase on the shifts. We finished seventh in this
race
We did some more tweaking between races and then made a great
start in the second race. We followed that with an awesome beat, reaching the
weather mark just behind the Chinese boat. However, the Chinese, our boat and
the French team were all flagged OCS - over the line early - so that was the end
of our race. The OCS pulled our overall score down, but we were real happy with
the boat’s performance on the one leg we sailed.
The Yngling fleet has now sailed nine of its ten scheduled races and tomorrow the top ten boats will wrap up racing with the Medal Race, featuring double points. We are currently fifth overall and although Mandy is almost untouchable in first place, there’s the chance of a place on the podium if we sail well and the chips fall our way.