Hyères, France
April 25, 2007

We have a day of Tornado Class racing remaining at the Semaine Olympique Française in Hyères and, after four day’s of light air misery we’re looking forward to some double trapezing teamwork. The top ten boats will be going on to the Medal Race on Friday but we won’t be amongst them

Coach Jon Farrar shows how it should be done

These light and shifty conditions here have been uncharacteristic for this regatta which actually has a reputation for good sailing weather. The event web site reported tonight: "Finally it should come – the easterly wind, fresh and strong, blowing straight in the bay, from the only direction where the islands will not tame the waves. They are dreaming about it, some fears it."

Bring it on, we say. We don’t "fears it!" We’ve spent too much time dying the death of a thousand cuts.

We had more hanging around the beach today waiting for the postponement flag to come down. We’ve got to hand it to the Race Committee. Here, at least they keep you ashore until things start to look promising. We used the time organizing our spare equipment and working on logistics for the next event. When the flag did come down, wind that we’d seen on the beach earlier had died and no-one was happy about launching.

The Brit sailors broke the deadlock, sailing out first, slapping the sides of their boats and booing loudly at the reluctant crowd ashore. That did it and we all got afloat and out to the course.

On Advanced Equities II, we decided the right hand side was going to come in big time and tacked as soon as we could after the start to get out that way. Only minutes later we were sucking for wind and the left was coming in strong with boats accelerating up the course while we struggled to get moving.

We were deep in the pack at the top mark and it was obvious that there wasn’t enough wind to fly a hull. We sailed a deep angle for the leeward mark and it paid as we overtook five boats on the run. After there were no gains to be hand on a slow truck up to the weather mark for the second time. But the next run was a gift. We jibed into an isolated lane of breeze that took us straight down the course, passing 15 to 20 boats before the Race Committee in its infinite wisdom decided to abandon the race.

The restart was one of our best yet and we had a good windward leg to round the weather mark in 13th place. Bad timing on the jibe cost us about ten places on the run. But that was just the beginning. After rounding the leeward mark we tacked but forgot to unlock the mast rotator. We stalled and hit the boat sailed by our German friends Johannes Polgar and Florian Spalteholtz. After we untangled, we were second to last at the weather mark but picked up ten boats on the final run to finish 32nd. One advantage to being in the back of the fleet is that you can see and avoid some of the tactical errors made by those in front of you.

Oskar Johansson from the Royal Canadian Yacht Club in Toronto, Canada is still the series leader, but Austrian skipper Roman Hagara, double Olympic Gold Medalist in Sydney and Athens, has moved into second place.

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 II