Bullet puts me into Medal Race!

After a few hours of postponing on shore, and another hour long postponement on the water, the Laser class got one light, 2-5 knot race on the last day of racing at Kiel.  This regatta has been plagued with light air, and it's been tough to sit through day after day always on my toes ready to race at the drop of the AP flag!

Our lone race started at about 2:30 today.  I had a great start at the favored pin end and continued on starboard for about 100 yards before tacking on to port and crossing the fleet.  The breeze was pretty steady so it was tough to cover everyone as the fleet split to opposite sides.  I played the middle left and found myself in 2nd place at the top mark behind Maxim Semerkhanov (RUS).  What was even cooler, though, was that Charlie Buckingham and Kyle Rogachenko -- my two US teammates here -- were in 3rd and 4th!

I had a pretty good downwind leg, passing Maxim at the bottom.  But Charlie and Wannes van Laer (BEL) went high in more pressure and got in front of us.  Kyle remained in 5th.  We all played some shifts up the middle and as we approached the top of the beat, Charlie had jumped out to 1st, I was 2nd, and Kyle was a close 3rd.  Again, pretty cool to see the three Americans round 1-2-3 at a mark!  We stayed the same on the reach and on the downwind, I was able to separate low towards the bottom in a little better pressure and just get room on Charlie and Wannes to slip into first.  I stayed in first on the final reach and covered tightly on the final beat to finish the race in 1st place!  Charlie was 2nd and Kyle was 4th.  Great race for team USA.

After the race, the wind died to almost nothing and we drifted around for an hour.  The Race Committee finally conceded and sent us in at about 5 PM.

So with a 1st in our race today I moved up to 5th overall!  That also means that I will be sailing in the medal race tomorrow!  Points are still close, so with a good race maybe I can continue the climb!

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