International
:: SAP World Championships DAY 1 :: (197 Reads)
Posted by
peterf
on Monday, August 24, 2009 - 02:41 PM
We started early on the gate and headed out to the left hand side of the course. By the time we came closer to the top end of the course we crossed in front of Ian Pinnell. Either he was doing really badly or we were doing OK. We unfortunately lost quite a few places on the down wind stretch which put us around the middle of the fleet.
The second race started in 25 knots minimum, building to around 30 knots. We were going extremely well. We were able to keep the boat on the plane on the beat which made all the difference. We sailed with enormous rake, where the mast is nearly against the back of the bulk head. The key was to play around with the ram and we even pulled the jib outwards to increase the slot size. the board was up slightly and this combination worked really well. We did not capsize except for a fluffed tack which caused half a capsize. I was very impressed with our boat handling as even numerous of the top guys were swimming. The race officer just walked in and he said that it was blowing around 35knots!
We unfortunately had gear failure on the second beat. The goose neck on the boom sheared of on a tack. The plastic swivel section seemed to have fatiqued and by that happening it actually jammed the goose neck and as we tacked it just sheared it off. That was our race over and done with. This was unfortunate as we were in the upper 20's probably at the time.
I had a walk through the boat park and counted 6 broken masts and 5 bent ones, a broken rudder of the Aussie boat. This actually happened right next to us on the reach, the guys had the kite up and were fully out on the wire. A big gust hit them and they went into a huge heel. A lot of shouting was going on and I think the rudder stalled as the skipper tried to bear away. As he was doing this, I just heard an enormous explosion!! his rudder just broke in half!
From my personal experience, it was an absolute blast today with some really hairy down wind legs!!!
More tomorrow then.
Cheers,
Peter Funke
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