Medal Race, Sail for Gold
Written by Chris Draper | 14 August 2010
Hello all, well sadly Peter and I ended the Sail for Gold on a very gutting note. We felt we had a great plan and were feeling great before the start of the medal race today.
We felt comfortable with the race area and Harvey, our coach, and the Met team had done a great job of preparing us. We needed a result in the top 4 in our minds to secure a medal.
We had a great start at the comittee boat end and were nicely in control off the start line. The wind was left so we quickly flicked onto Port to go with the fleet. The wind started to shift back to the right so we tacked back ready for the final wind shift into the windward mark. Sadly it never came, the wind just kept going right. We also sailed over a big clump of weed. This just confounded our problems as we were now the wrong side of the shift and going very slowly.
We were still in the race but we just couldn't seem to do anything right. By the time we had realised how bigger problem the weed was for us the race had gone and we were firmly last.
This puts us 5th overall. Which isn't terrible. We achieved our goal at the event as well, it just would have been nice to have come away with a medal. We are really gutted but are both excited about getting on with improving our weak areas. We are struggling for boatspeed which is making it hard for us. It is like racing in Formula 1 and driving a slow car. It just makes it so much harder.
We are looking forward to having a bit of a break and then getting into some really good winter training when I am sure we will make a huge leap forwards even more. We have had a pretty good season, 2nd in Palma, 4th in Kiel, 1st Europeans and 5th here. We are getting towards the top but there is still plenty of work for us to do, and work we will !!!!
Thanks so much to all the people who give us so much support, all the best and we look forward to keeping you up to speed with how things progress.
Chris