Artemis Racing. Image copyright Chris Odom.
by Morgan Trubovich
OK. Eight races? They are truly trying to wear us out. But it was the best day of racing so far. Bright blue skies and a very nice 7-12 knot sea breeze. The racing was so close to the shore that the committee boat was actually tied to the spectator wall all day! That was another first for us! But it made it pretty cool for the thousands of people who lined the shore to watch the racing.
Today had potential to be a very tough day for us. The nature of the races were such that if you wanted to win a race you needed to win the pin end of the line at the start. But if you tried to battle every other team for that start there was going to be one winner and a bunch of losers. This made it difficult for us as our style has always been conservative. Not going for the win but rather trying to chip chip away and have good results in the top 4 or 5 in every race. No double digits. It was hard to be conservative today as you knew that you were giving away the chance to win races. In the end our results of 2,9,3,7,6,10,2,2 were actually enough to stretch our painfully narrow lead over second place by a few points.
So going into tomorrow we have a 10 point lead over The Wave and 11 points over Emirates Team New Zealand. Plenty to play for with the potential of another 14 races over the next two days.
We are all exhausted – but tomorrow we FIGHT!
Artemis Racing
Extreme Sailing Series
