6mR World Cup - Day 3

Day 3 brought similar conditions to day 2, but slighly less breeze and smaller seas. Fortunately, it did not bring similar results as we finally got back in the hunt. In the first race we had a 2 good starts that got recalled, the second one was really good, but the third start that counted put us on the second row, but at least allowed us to go out to the right hand side we wanted. We rounded mid fleet, and went to raise the spin, when the halyard came detached. A quick recovery launched the kite on the backup halyard. We passed back most of the boats that passed us on our slow hoist, then had the spare halyard fly away after the douse. On the downwind leg I noticed we had lost a mainsail batten, so we called David to ask him to drive to the Hood loft to get a replacement and bring it out to us ASAP, hopefully between races. We again rounded the windward mark around mid fleet, and Toby managed to grab the dangling halyard saving us having to douse the jib first to use it's halyard for the spin. We again had a late set, and again had to try to claw back a boat or two that had passed in that time. Again we passed two boats back and finished 17th.

Our second start got delayed due to a reset of the starting line, so we had just enough time to replace the batted David had brought out. We had to drop the main, measure the batten, cut the batten, install and then raise the main. With 4:30 before our start, we still had the main on the deck, and we were about 45 seconds late to the start, but luckily it was also a general recall. 2nd start was again a black flag and we got forced down by a windward boat, but got a decent lane and worked out to the right. The second half of the leg saw the left come back into favor so we rounded mid fleet, had a strong downwind leg and passed a few boats at the rounding. We lost Madcap upwind, and then clawed them back and almost passed Jill downwind, all three boats finishing within 2 second with us between Jill and Madcap for a 15th place finish (24 boats total in classic fleet).

Overall it was a blast of a day, but rather chilly after climatizing to South America. Forcast for day 4 is another breezy day out of the north east, and we hope we can continue to improve on our 21st overall position.

See Full results at Sail Newport