Today was day one of the Semaine Olympique Francaise , the fourth leg of the ISAF World Cup . It was a long day with only one race sailed for the Laser Radial fleet. I finished the race in 6th in shifty and light conditions.
Photo: Guillaume Durand
We had a postponement due to lack of wind to start the day. Racing was supposed to begin at 12pm. The postponement was dropped at 12:15pm, and we then had a 20 minute tow to the course area. We are sharing the course with the Finns. They finally got a race off after two general recalls. It was just at the right time for the wind to start getting shifty, not letting us get off a start . We wallowed around until 4:30pm when we finally started our race. We had one general recall before we actually got racing.
I had a great start in the race, on port tack crossing the fleet. Unfortunately, I had a boat on my hip that wouldn't allow me to tack back to startboard on the first shift, and as a consequence, I got stuck in the middle of the course. I rounded the top mark in 12th and didn't really pass any boats on the downwind leg.
Up the next leg, I got in phase with the wind and passed six boats to round the top mark in 6th. I passed one more boat on the reach, but on the last downwind leg, the wind started to get very light. The boats behind us started to bring the breeze down with them to us, but luckily I held onto my 6th place position at the bottom mark to reach into the finish.
I'm pretty happy with how the day went. It was good to get racing, to get rid of the nervous energy.
Tomorrow, our start is scheduled to be at 12pm again. The race committee will try for three races so we can catch up with the schedule. You can check out the results at the regatta website here: Semaine Olympique Francaise I would like to thank Carmeuse for their continued support in my campaign for the 2012 Olympics in London.
Sail hard, Anna
