Audi MedCup: Paul Cayard on Day 2 on Artemis

by Paul Cayard

Today was a good practice day for us on Artemis. The Mistral was still in but it was sailable with winds of 18-24 knots. Bright sunshine, a bit cooler at 27C and very dry conditions.

Yesterday there was too much wind to sail as the Mistral was in at 30 knots. I got a nice session in at the gym and ate a big lunch as I still need to work on gaining some weight for the 505 Worlds at the end of August in SF.

With yesterday lost, we left the dock at 1000 today and put in a big day getting back at 1530.

The Artemis and Team New Zealand coach boats collaborated to set up a race course and ran four sets of races for the whole fleet. A race on a practice day actually consists of three starts. Two are just practice starts and on the third start the fleet continues for a one lap, windward leeward race. So, with the four sets today we got in 12 starts and four races.

It was a big day and a good one for us on Artemis. As I am new to the team, I have a lot of work to do to integrate myself into their program and my communication with skipper Torbjon Tornquist. I have my work cut out for me filling in for Russell Coutts who is out in San Diego scaring himself on some sort of trimaran with a 300 foot high mast.

Team New Zealand and Quantum Racing were the best today while we were middle of the pack. It was a good day though, as we did so much racing and starting that we had plenty of opportunities to get into all sorts of situations and work on our communication and tactics.

Tomorrow is the official practice race which should start at 1300. The forecast is for this Mistral to die down and for the southeast sea breeze to fill in tomorrow. This weather scenario should dominate the racing area for the first few days of our regatta at least.

The first race will be on Tuesday and we usually have three races a day except on the "long distance" race day which will be Thursday. The regatta will end on Saturday.

Cayard Sailing
Audi MedCup