Hyeres, France
April 24, 2008

Day Five was another beautiful sunny day. The third such day of sun in since we arrived ten days ago. We spent all day on the beach waiting for wind to come in strong enough to race. Feast or famine meant a week of too much wind and now not enough. Finally at 3:00 pm the postponement flag came down and we left the beach for a single race day. We towed to the race course behind our coach, Andi, and arrived to do some pre-race tuning with our training partner Mitch and Pim, who are in contention to win the regatta.

Photo: Gilles Martin-Raget / FFV © 2008

The tuning session paid off, we got a great start near the leeward end. We sailed a solid first beat to round in fourth. The fireworks then started as the wind began to die and get really shi(f)ty. At times, we dropped as low as 8th and as high as 3rd. Each lap brought another challenge and was great practice for Qingdao. We raced the final downwind trying to attack and cover the fleet at the same time and did very well to cross the finish line in 5th place in a crazy, dying wind. This was our best result of the event and a good sign that based on this performance we can be competitive in the light and tricky winds we expect to find in Qingdao during the Olympics. The new boat we have here is far from perfect so we are spending the day tomorrow working on it before packing it up and sending on to the next event.

Unfortunately we did not finish in the top ten overall and will not be sailing in the medal race tomorrow, but we got a lot of good training in and learned quite a bit about the new boat we are testing. The jury is still out for which boat to use for the Games, but we have time to test and we know our other boat is very competitive. After tomorrow we are heading back home for a week of rest before coming back to Europe for two weeks of training and follow by our next event on the circuit in Holland leading up to the Olympics this August. Stay tuned for more updates while we are move forward on the road to Qingdao.

You can download full results online. Click HERE for some videos of today's racing.

Semaine Olympique Française website - sof.ffvoile.net. We want to acknowledge all the support from our sponsor, Advanced Equities, and from our individual supporters.

Please spread the word with your friends and fellow sailors to join the team to receive our regular updates and, if they wish to make a donation.

Sail fast,

Johnny Lovell and Charlie Ogletree - Team Advanced Equities I