Auckland, NZ
February 19, 2008

We finished seventh overall in the Singapore Airlines Sail Auckland 2008 regatta today after a fifth place finish in the Medal Race on the Waitemata Harbour. Earlier, the final fleet race on the Hauraki Gulf was cancelled for lack of wind.

A good regatta

After our fleet racing was called off this morning, our group spent several hours in a local coffee shop before setting sail for the Kohimarama YC, the host club for Sail Auckland. Conditions had picked up and by the time we started there was a steady 15-16 knot breeze out of the northeast accompanied by fairly flat water.

For a Medal Race, it was a longer and tougher workout than usual – four quite long laps, lasting in all about half an hour. We knew the best score we could achieve was sixth and the worse 10th so we had to protect our flanks, as it were, while taking a few chances at moving up the points table.

The start line was a long one and we were part of a group of four boats that elected to go for a port tack start. It meant ducking the right-of-way starboard tackers but a duck at reaching speeds in a catamaran costs little in time and distance while eliminating one tack on the way to the weather mark.

We had wanted to focus less on boat speed for this event and more on tactics and boat handling. We were fourth at the top mark and the fleet positions didn’t change drastically after that. We dropped one more place before the finish.

We’ll be taking a day off tomorrow before we resume tuning and testing in advance of the worlds.

Landing the boat

Sail fast,

Johnny Lovell & Charlie Ogletree - Team Advanced Equities I