To describe today in one word you would simply say, Hard. We had really good starts, generally what we thought was a pretty good plan and great boat speed but each race threw something random at us that we were generally on the wrong side of.

However, we did escape with three reasonable results that keep us well up there overall and in good shape for the rest of the event.

We were in the blue flight ( the fleet is split into two equally matched groups for the first few days of the regatta referred to as 'qualifying' ) which meant we sailed our first race in a dying wind that was coming off the land. This meant for big direction and windspeed changes. We had a great start and in hind sight tried to be a little too clever and tacked away to lead most of the fleet towards historically, the correct way to go. However, the wind played a different game and the other side of the course came in very strong at the first mark. We had our work cut out a little but managed to get back to a respectable 8th by the end of the race.

The wind completely died and we had a brief return to the shore before heading out again for two more races in the sea breeze. The sea breeze conditions are normally a real strength for us but today it was a bit of a funky wind. We found a few horrible snakes but fortunately generally found some good ladders to get us back into respectable finishes of 12 and 8.

The day puts us into 5th overall which is fine at this stage, the most positive thing is that many of the people around us have scored some really big points which will prove costly when we go into the gold fleet finals racing. It would seem that everyone found the day hard, not just us, so we are still in touch with the leaders.

We feel a bit frustrated by the day but at the same time we are very excited about tomorrow. Lady luck owes us a couple for sure.

Thanks to all for the support. Chris and Peter

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