Waka Racing in their new Zhik gear. Supplied image.
by Garth Ellingham
Sunday was the first day of the GKSS Spring Cup being held in Gothenburg, Sweden. This is a qualifier for the highly coveted Match Cup Sweden that is part of the World Match Race Tour.
It was like Christmas for the boys last night with our cool new gear arriving from Zhik (there was packaging scattered everywhere!). Unfortunately like Boxing Day everyone was a bit flat to begin with today. Conditions were 15-18 knots, sunny but pretty chilly.
It was a tough start to the day with the top 4 ranked teams (us being the lowest ranked) racing each other. In all three starts we were in really great positions to dominate the start but lacked the confidence to put ‘the nail in the coffin’. This meant gaining even starts but not being able to take advantage of the favoured left hand side, as we were positioned to windward.
The three skippers we lost to were Mattias Rahm, Stefan Lindberg, and Keith Swinton. As the format is one round robin, semis, and then finals this put us in a must win situation to make the top four. Luckily the team kicked into gear winning our remaining races to sneak into the top four on count back.
Video of Phil Robertson on Day One:
Tomorrow we have semi–finals and hopefully finals (both are best of three races). We don’t know who we are racing tomorrow but are unfazed whoever it may be. Our aim is to go out and sail to potential and if that happens we know we can take down any team.
Waka Racing would like to thank our main sponsor Tax Management NZ and all the support we receive from the RNZYS, Frontend, Zhik , Wells and Co, PredictWind and Devine Consultants.
Waka Racing
