Waka Racing in Estonia. Supplied image.
by Garth Ellingham
Since we last left you we have done quite a lot. We have travelled by overnight ferry, arriving mid-morning in Tallinn, Estonia. Then not wasting much time to head straight out racing and not coming in untill 8pm last night. Racing for us has contined today in lightning, thunder, and torential rain truly testing our Zhik Wet Weather gear. Throughout both days racing has been conducted in shifty, mainly moderate to very windy conditions.
Day 1
To be honest this regatta didn’t start off any better than our previous one with two truly infuriating loses. The first being against Mike Perris, when as we entered the pre-start our port winch (that had been working fine for our whole warm up) decided to start spinning both ways. This meant Sam (who is trimming the jib for this event) was severely disadvantaged for the entire race. However we battled hard and put pressure on him throughout the race to lose by ¼ of a boat length.
The 2nd loss was against regatta leader Peter Wibroe. The deciding moment of the race was near the bottom mark when we pulled a fake gybe against him and got him on Starboard when he had gybed onto Port. However the umpires somehow completely missed the fact that Peter was on Port and penalised us for luffing above proper coarse. This handed Peter the race and afterwards again the umpires apologised to us…
So there we were again staring down the barrel of another terrible and unlucky start to an event. This time however we turned it around. We finished the day with 3 wins/ 2 loses. The highlight being, convincingly beating top ranked Bjorn Hansen from start to finish in tricky conditions.
Day 2
We continued our form from the end of day 1 to sail well and gain 3 wins in our morning session. Then after a long 6 race off break, we were back on the water at 6pm to complete our remaining 3 races in the round robin.
These were all close affairs with victories over Simone Ferrarese, Keith Swinton and a loss to Eugeny Neugodnikov. Once again it has been another late finish for us getting off the water at 8:30pm. However we came ashore to find out that we had finished the round robin 2nd, losing to Peter Wibroe (1st) on countback.
Tomorrow we have the semi finals where Peter will pick between ourselves, Simone Ferrarese, and Robert Nyberg. We are not fussed who we race and are amped for some tough racing tomorrow!
The Waka Boys signing off...
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
Baltic Match Tour
