Thursday was a sit around day for the most part.  The RC's intent has been to try to do a round robin for each "half" of the fleet.  For those in the top 8 after the first round robin, they are racing among themselves in the quarter-finals.  The rest of us (the bottom 8) are racing our own RR.  

RC's obvious priority is the quarter-finals.  Yesterday started with a shifty puffy breeze off the cost (northerly breeze).  Mix of clouds and sun.  In the forecast was a pretty strong front line that was forecast to bring something between 40-50k of wind with thunderstorms.  We never saw much wind, but did get some good heavy rain in the afternoon and into the evening.

They started out with our group.  We raced two flights, then swapped out with the other group, who completed 5 of their 7 quarter-final flights.

In our two races, we were 1-1.  We had good boat speed (weeeeee) upwind and downwind in both flights, wind 10-12, very very flat water.  I'm not sure we are doing anything particularly different.  Might be the boats, might be the lighter wind and flat seas, might be that we just stopped trying to out-smart ourselves and went back to our basic sail trimming instincts.  

First up was Phillippe from France (her first name eludes me at the moment).  We won the start and had a nice 5-7 boat length lead half up the first beat, both going off to the right on port tack.  She started a bit of a tacking dual and we covered, but on the second or third set of tacks, we stretched out a bit on starboard to build speed after our tack before covering.  She picked up a nice puff to the right of us and, bam, gone was most of the lead.  We compounded that mistake by not taking control of the right side of the course (where the puffs were, silly us) on the next pair of tacks.  And she had the lead.   She gave that back to us on the run by over-standing, and we rounded the leeward mark, 1 boat length ahead.  She got up on our hip as we rounded the leeward mark, and then got to the right ahead of us.  She got the lead back and this time didn't give it up.  

Second match against Guilia Conti, we won the start again and this time, we were more alert of the power of the puffs and on a couple of occasions let Guilia head away from us while we stayed in a good puff. That strategy worked and we kept the lead the whole race.

RC plans for Friday are unclear.  Depends on the wind and weather forecast.  If the winds look good, they probably let us finish our round robin and that RR score will determine our final overall place.  If the winds don't look so good, they may cancel our round to focus on the semis and finals.  

Looking out the window this morning (Friday AM): bright sunny skies although the breeze looks pretty light at the moment.  The bright sunshine is good news, probably the front is through and we should have good wind.  Hopefully we can keep sailing better and come home much improved on our 15th place start.

For the other American teams in the quarters: Dawn Riley is have a bad quarterfinals (1-4) and probably will not make the semis.  Lyz (sic) Baylis is sailing very well (4-1) and almost certainly will make the semis.

Me, Susan, and Stacy Straw (sailing with Liz) did succeed in getting to the Capri Restaurant last night and we ham'ed around in front of the web cam in the rain at about 11:45pm local time.  So check out yesterdays accumulated picks. 

None yet.