Hyères, France
April 24, 2007

A 25th place in the first race today at the Semaine Olympique Française was a keeper for us in this week of light air misery. It meant that almost half of this talented international Tornado catamaran fleet was behind us at the finish gun and, although we could have done better, it felt good.

Photo: Guilain Grenier/www.martin-raget.com

The rapid acceleration and deceleration of these trim-sensitive flying machines puts helmsmen at the whim and mercy of every wind shift and hole in the breeze. Witness the fate of the Greek skipper Iordanis Paschalidis, who was leading the regatta yesterday before a second-to-last place and an 18th today dropped him to fifth overall.

Oskar Johansson, a North American skipper from Toronto, Canada is now the series leader, after finishing first and second yesterday and discarding one of his two 17th places from earlier in the week. Fortunes are changing here faster than Las Vegas.

On Advanced Equities II we’re continuing our never-ending ritual of testing and analysing all the elements that contribute to a stellar performance. This morning, we switched our spinnaker pole to one that allows the tack of the spinnaker to be out at maximum length and it proved to be the answer to our light air downwind sorrows.

We had a decent start in the first race and battled our way around the course in super light breezes. At the first weather mark we were in the middle of the pack and settled down and pretty much held onto that position for the rest of the race. Downwind we were going very well and didn’t lose boats on either of the downwind legs of this shortened course. Events on the final beat didn’t help. It featured a monster right shift that rewarded the boats that had gone furthest right.

We had a tough first beat in the second race after getting another decent start. After rounding the weather mark, we chose to do a spinnaker jibe-set and headed right, passing 17 or more boats on the run. Drew called the layline to the leeward mark perfectly and we were in the hunt before the breeze started to drop and we began losing boats. To be conservative, we played the middle on the last run while the boats that went to the outside corners proved to do better. Everyone converged on the finish in a huge clump and we ended up 38th but only seconds out of another 25th.

We’ll have daily competition updates for you from Hyères. You can check the latest results any time at Hyères Tornado Results. If popups are blocked on your computer, you may need to control/click to see the results.  Our sponsor, Advanced Equities, is at www.advancedequities.com.   

Sail fast,

Donald Thinschmidt and Drew Wierda - Team Advanced Equities