Day 1 in the 49er
Written by Peter Greenhalgh | 17 November 2010
First day of racing done and dusted at the Perth ISAF worlds test event. We were scheduled to start at 900am but sadly the wind did not play the game and were ended up sat on shore for the sea breeze to come in. After a few hours a nice little breeze filled in and we were off.
Race 1 was a tricky number, we are racing with both fleets on the course at once and we started as the other fleet came around their leeward mark. This meant for the first lap it was hard to see how we were doing. We worked out that it was going nicely and ended up having a close little battle with the Aussie for 1st and 2nd.
He got the better of us but we sailed a good race.
Race no.2 and the breeze had built up nicely. We won the pin and led at the windward mark. We maintained our lead until approaching the windward mark we made a little mistake and let 2nd place through. It was a shame but it was pretty much out of our control. We sailed a good downwind to finish with another 2nd.
Race three and the Fremantle 'doctor' was threatening to keep building. We had a good first beat again and at the bottom gate were about to round 4th when a mini disaster ensued. The knot on the end of our spinnaker halyard pulled through meaning we couldn't get it down to go back upwind.
After some impressive gathering by Peter we were able to keep racing but sadly our good result was now way out of our grasp. It was sad to have a bad race due to gear failure but we won't be doing the knot the same again so we learnt something major from the day !
We had good speed, we are sailing really nicely and having good fun. We'll sleep well tonight and be looking forward to getting out there again tomorrow.
We will keep you up to speed with how we are going, thanks for all the support.
Chris and Peter