Long Day, Mediocre Start to CORK
Today was the first day of CORK. The 47 Lasers were set for a 1 PM start today, and things looked promising with 10-12 knots of breeze and a short sail out to the course. We sailed double windward-leeward courses and had our own course, which was nice.
In the first race, the pin was ridiculously favored. I lined up 2nd up from the pin, but with a few seconds to go wasn't going to make it. I rafted up with about 3-4 other guys and two of us were yellow flagged for sculling. After a quick 720 penalty turn, I went out to the left and found myself in about 15th at the weather mark. I played catch up for the rest of the race, but could only manage to get back up to 9th at the finish.
After almost two hours of waiting around for the Race Committee to reposition the course, we finally got started with our second race in about 12-14 knots. Again, the pin was very biased. I had a great start near the pin and went almost all the way to the left. I tacked back early and crossed most of the fleet. Andy Maloney (NZL) and Alexander Heinzemann (CAN) went further left and wound up inside of me by the mark. I rounded in 3rd. Andy pulled away a bit, and I was in a battle for 2nd with a few other guys. I sailed a pretty good rest of the race to finish 2nd in the race.
Finally at 5 PM we started our last race of the day. At this point the breeze started to really drop off to about 6 knots. The Race Committee didn't shorten the course though, so our race was very long, almost 1.5 hours. I had a good start near the pin and headed hard to the left since that had been working all day. But the left wasn't that great and the leaders came out of the middle. I struggled to get back, rounding in the teens again. I had ok downwind speed, staying in the same spot, but catching up a lot of distance to get back in the mix by the leeward mark. I played the middle right on the next beat and caught up to 11th by the windward mark. I had a good downwind, passing a few boats, to finish in 8th.
So my scorecard read 9-2-8 on the day. Not a great start, but there are 15 races scheduled, so there's plenty of racing left. Also working against me is that I was scored as OCS'd in the second race today. A handful of boats were scored OCS (we all think--pretty confidently-- that there was a mistake on the RC's part) and we're all involved in a redress hearing tomorrow morning at 8:30 before sailing.
Hopefully that gets sorted, the Race Committee does a better job tomorrow, and we can bang off three solid races.
