Roller Coaster Regatta
Written by Dylan Fletcher | 12 April 2011
Well Princess Sofia Regatta was a bit of a roller-coaster for us. We arrived out there a couple of days for the regatta to get the boat all ready to go and get a few practice races in.
The Sunday before the regatta started was my birthday and I hit the big 23, which is starting to make me feel pretty old now.
Anyway the regatta started on Monday but not before a long wait on the shore while we waited for the wind to decrease a bit. They launched us at about 4pm for 2 of the scheduled 3 races in 15-20knots.
We have been working a lot on first day and first race execution so this was a great test and it was safe to say it was the best day we ever had with 2 race wins! A great confidence boost to start the event and really showed that we have made some good boatspeed gains over the winter.
The 2nd day was a tough day on the water for everyone. We had a good first race with a 5th but then scored a 12th and 9th. The latter two races were hard to say the least with some massive unpredictable shifts, but as it turned out our day was not that bad and we held on to 2nd overall.
Day 3 was not such a great day for us, we got it wrong in the first race but managed to get back to 10th. Then smashed the second race with a bullet, then as the conditions changed we did not adapt quick enough for race 3 with a 19th. Then finally got it very wrong in a difficult last race to come 19th. Our worst day since Holland regatta last year, so we were very disappointed with ourselves.
Then it was onto Gold Fleet racing, this is when the top 25 boats all race together and were the regatta really starts. It was normal sea breeze conditions but with the right paying more than normal. We thought we had the best day in the fleet, posting a 5,6,2 but found out later that we were over the line in race 2! What a disaster, but we still moved up to 3rd overall.
Day 5 and the last day of fleet racing started off badly with a 22nd. Best not to think about that race… Then we posted a 8,11 which was ok but we did not really have our head around the conditions and made it very hard for ourselves. That put us in equal 8th place going into the Medal race.
We could still come home with a Bronze if we got very lucky in the medal race but had to settle for 6th overall and 1st Brit. Not a bad result by any means but just not a good one! Now we are back home before flying out to France in 10 days for Hyeres Regatta.
Hopefully we can take all the positives from this Regatta and try and get a medal in Hyeres. Also thinking about it maybe we should not have won that practice race…
Thanks again to everyone supporting our campaign!
Dylan