I arrived at the beach this morning to find that it was another very cold day here on the island of Rugen. and to top it off it was raining off on on. which didn’t make it any warmer. the forecast promised good wind but i didn’t see any. After hanging around for a couple of hours a rain squall came through bringing about 12-18knots of wind. so we headed out to start the fourth race of the regatta, trying to get a discard.
I had a great start but tacked to soon and then watched the guys that i was with round the windward mark in top positions. lucky for me the wind died pretty quickly leaving most of the fleet standing still at the windward mark. so with no wind we all made our way back to the beach to get some food.
The wind came back up very quickly so the race committee called us back on the water with most of the racers still standing in the lunch line. so we all had to race back to the water with most of the guys getting no food.
the wind was unbelievably shifty. and the next start saw different wind directions at the two ends of the start line. i had a terrible start, and rounded the windward mark in the back of the fleet. i worked pretty hard to get back to 37th. that was my discard!! then the wind completely died and most of us slogged our way back to the beach. but as soon as we finally got there. the wind came back and we were called straight back on the water.
In the next race i had a great start and sailed all the way to the layline before tacking for the windward mark. i rounded comfortably in first and took off on the long reach to the next mark, with Antoine and Ben following behind. i extended my lead a little on the downwind. on the second upwind my forearms were starting to cramp up. so i was working really hard to keep going fast in the stonger wind on my WindWing 12.5. Around the second windward mark i still had a bit of a lead on Antoine and Peter. but my forearms were really dying and i jybed in a bit of a hole and it took a while to pump back on to a plane. i rounded the leeward mark in third and made some errors on the last upwind to the finish and dropped a couple more spots to fifth. so i was pretty dissapointed with that.
it was starting to get dark and they decided to run one last race for the day. i had another great start at the pin end and sailed to the layline again. i rounded the windward mark this time in sixth. right behind arnon, steve and antoine. kevin and woitek were way out ahead with a big lead. postitions didnt change much on the first downwind. on the second upwind i was going really fast on port tack but arnon showed some amazing speed on starboard passing over the top of Antoine. i managed to go over the top of Steve and move into fifth. Arnon continued to fly downwind passing kevin and moving into second behind Woitek who had quite a lead. i almost caught kevin and Antoine on the downwind but had to settle for fourth(since Kevin was called overearly) holding off Andrea who pushed really hard going to the finish.
So i had a pretty good day moving into fourth postion overall. Arnon could move ahead of me though depending on how he gets redressed for a collision that he had in the second race today.
I’m really happy to finally be back up in the top spots after few bad regatta’s. tomorrow the forecast is calling for light wind so hopefully we can get a couple of more races in for another discard.
We will see.See you on the water.
Devon Boulon
ISV-1
