RC44s: Paul Cayard - Ceeref has an ok Day

Torbjorn Tornqvist' Artemis with Dean Barker calling the shots - always excellent but unlucky today. Image copyright GEPA pictures/Marie Rambauske/RC44 Class Association.

by Paul Cayard

The Ceeref team had an ok day today. As with most of the teams, we went from first to last and back so many times and can't remember. The conditions were fairly light and very shifty. There were some massive holes, the worst of which swallowed up Artemis in one race that they were winning on the second windward leg and left them in last.

The weather has been bad the last 48 hours. Lots of rain and very shifty, gusty conditions. This what we woke up to today with the added factor of 6C temperature. We don't really have the right clothes for this place. However it was 33C here on Monday.

We had the "long race" first today. This race is called the DHL race as it is sponsored by DHL. It was about a 5 miles beat to windward and a 5 mile run. The race counts double points and naturally it was our worst race. We were in good shape in third about three quarters of the way up to the top mark. Then, I got us out of phase and we rounded about 7th.

Down the run we made some gains and passed one boat only to fall in a hole just before the finish and have one boat come from behind with a puff and roll us right on the line. We finished 7th in that one and it counted double! God knows why.

Anyway, Team Sea Dubai went from dead last to first in this one. They were followed by Artemis and then BMW Oracle who had a huge come back as well.

Then we had two windward leeward races. Well, that is what they were supposed to be. These were both very squirrely races with the wind going from 165 at 7 knots to 180 and then to 120 and dying to 2 knots. We had decent starts in these and managed to get a 4th and a 2nd.

All this took hours. We went out at 0900 today and came in a 1700. Lots of time in between races waiting for the wind to come up of settle in direction. That is almost a hopeless aspiration here. The people are very friendly though.

Anyway, tonight is the gala dinner and tomorrow is the last day of racing. We start again at 1000 and hopefully we will get four races in which is the maximum allowed in one day.

The points for top 5 in the fleet racing as of now are:
No Way Back - 19 Points
Ceeref - 21
Team Aqua - 21
Artemis - 23
Team Sea Dubai - 30

Cayard Sailing
RC44