By Paul Cayard:Another beautiful day on Biscayne Bay. Sunny and 80 degrees with a light Southeasterly breeze. Plenty of sunburns for everyone.
We had a decent result finishing 10th. It was huge recovery after a not-so-flash start and a 30th place at the first mark.
After one general recall, the race committee hoisted the black flag for the second start. When the black flag is up, if you are over the line within one minute of the starting signal, you are disqualified from the race. So it is prudent to be conservative. Maybe we were a bit too conservative and therefore we were at the back of the pack coming off the line. A few boats were caught out at the start.
The course today was a simple, four leg, windward-leeward course - 8 miles in total. The conditions were 7-10 knots from 110 degrees. Fairly flat sea. The standard rules of Biscayne Bay don?t seem to be applying so far this week. The right side of the course has be unusually good. That keeps the course more open and there is more shuffling of positions.
The race was won by Italian Lucio Boggi, with Peter Bromby of Bermuda finishing second and Peter Wright of Chicago in third. Many of the top boats yesterday had bad results today. It is tough out there.
The upshot of the redress claims in yesterday's first race was that the jury gave redress to those who complained. Almost everyone lost something in the confusion; but only four boats filed for redress. I just figured the race was going to be thrown out, but I was wrong. About four people complained, one of them being Peter Bromby of Bermuda who had a great race today finishing second. So the four boats who filed for redress will receive the average of their scores for that first race, making it a bit difficult to calculate the scores as their scores will be a moving average every day.
Austin and I are pretty pleased with our speed in this light air. We are very light in our crew weight, about 15 kilos under the Class Rule. Here at the Bacardi Cup, the class weight rule doesn't apply so there are some teams here that outweigh us by 125 pounds. Hopefully, it won't blow too hard.
I think tomorrow's forecast is still for fairly light breeze. For complete results go to: http://www.bacardicup.com/ - Cayard Sailing Website
