RC44s: Paul Cayard Reports on the Match Racing in Dubai

by Paul Cayard

The Match Racing boiled down to 4 races as there was no wind yesterday and we got started at 1230 today. Likewise, we did not race everyone in the fleet. The fleet was divided into two groups and we did one mini round robin within each group.

On Katusha, we had a good day by winning three of our four races. We had a bad day because in the first race, we were involved in a prestart incident where the umpires decided we were at fault and because the two boats touched we got a scoring penalty of one race and then because there was damage, albeit minor, we got another race taken away. Plus, we had to do the penalty turn during the race.

This was extra frustrating as I believe we were not in the wrong and the tactician of the other boat even came and told me he was very concerned that they were in fact in the wrong.

So there you go, we start four race event with a minus 2 score. Pretty bad. Meanwhile, in another race, one boat T-boned another boat, the hole was bad enough that they were taking on water, and they got the same penalty as us!

I went and talked to the umpires after the racing was completed, asking about such a heavy penalty, 2 races deducted, and they said, "Sorry, it is written that way in the sailing instructions so there is nothing we can do." You know what, someday we will have a commissioner in our sport, just like in the NFL or the NBA and he will have discretion to make the right call.

But I have to hand it to the Katusha team; we won everything from that first race on and finished realizing we are the same strong team that won the Match Racing in Slovenia 8 weeks ago.

Bob "Peaches" Little did an excellent job for us today in calling the wind and we won the side of the start we wanted in the three races we won. We even shut out Artemis at the committee boat in the last race of the day which was nice.

So, we aren't happy about our score but we are happy with how we are sailing. And we take that into the fleet racing tomorrow.

I should mention that my long time friend Rod Davis, skippering Cereef, won the day by winning all four of his races. Rod is surely the oldest pro helmsman out here at 53. Thanks Rod for taking that honor and good on you for winning! In fact, as bad as it was for us, we will not be last, I am sure we beat Aqua and Artemis. I don't know the final results of the day yet but you can check for them on the class site below.
I think I better go have a beer and let this one blow over.

Cayard Sailing
RC44