Miami, Florida
February 10, 2008

We finished with mixed results on the opening day of the 2008 Yngling Women’s World Championship in Miami today. After scoring a solid second place in the first race we jumped the gun to ultimately finish 14th in the next, to place eighth overall. 

Day One leeward mark action

Today’s forecast was for 15-20 knots from the northeast and that’s what eventuated, with a building breeze clearing Biscayne Bay of most recreational craft by the end of the day. With the northerly, the waves were smaller than they might have been but they were enough to make for some lively sailing action.

As we lined up for the first race near the pin end of the line, Britain’s Shirley Robertson was right in front of us and it was pretty obvious she’d be early. We eventually tacked out from under her on the beat and at the first mark we were second behind Silja Lehtinen from Finland. Shirley was flagged OCS at the top mark. We had a strong run and split with Finland at the leeward gate. On the next beat we got out of phase with the shifts and got bounced back into the fleet, dropping as deep as sixth for a time, before we recovered to round third. Sarah Ayton from Great Britain had moved into first and Silja was second. We passed the Finns on the next run but were still chasing Sarah when we finished.

We went for a start near the committee for the second race. It was windy and hectic and the coaches told us afterwards that as the seconds ticked down we were close to the line and making them nervous. We made a great start but the individual recall flag went up and we guessed it was likely to be us and went back and restarted. After all, it’s better to have a mid-fleet finish score than an OCS. Sally did a great job to get us back in the game but we didn’t make a lot of headway on the fleet until the third windward leg where we put in a really nice performance to finish 14th.

We were real fast in the first race today and we’re looking forward to tomorrow when the forecasters are calling for another windy day.

The full results for this regatta are at Yngling Worlds ’08.