by Paul Cayard
I hate to report this to you but we had a very bad day on Artemis. We still managed to finish 5th in the regatta, but the racing today could hardly have been more painful for us.
The conditions were perfect for this final day; 15 knot Easterly breeze, blue skies, moderate swell and the temperature was down to a manageable 30C.
The short story is that we had good starts and we were near the front of the pack in all three races, but never got ourselves into control of any of the races. As such, we ended up getting into the congestion of the "pack" and we got swallowed up every time.
In the first two races, our upwind speed was not good. We had a hard think about it and changed our set up and were going fast again in the last race. We were very fast downwind all day.
So after two poor races, we were really focused on a good result in the last one to finish on a good note. We had a good start at the port end of the line because we wanted to go left. Unfortunately the wind went right, typical for the day. Approaching the top mark on port tack, we had to go behind almost everyone. Just as we were making a good move into 5th on the run, our spinnaker drop line system failed and we sailed past the gate and into last place. We did manage to pass one boat.
Anyway, that is history. We had all things go our way in Barcelona a month ago.
Emirates Team New Zealand won the regatta easily, Matador was second and TeamOrigin third.
Artemis Racing
Audi MedCup
