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News Costa Brava
On my way back home to Maui after a long week in Costa Brava. It has been a long slow start for my season, not in terms of results just in terms of the waiting game. Korea was a lot of waiting around but not compared to Costa Brava. It seemed like it hovered around the 7 knot wind minimum almost every day, even the days that we did get a few heats in it was still on the edge. I used my big stuff, 9.5 and 82 for every race and never had a thought to get down to the 8.6. For the most part it was good racing, light but enough to get around the course. There were a few strange calls going both ways but there was also some missed wind where we could have maybe gotten a few more heats in, but this is the way it goes when the wind is so teasing like it was in CB.
The only final that we had was a pretty tough heat, the first leg was a race between myself, Antoine and Steve all three arriving at the mark at about the same time. Steve had the upwind position and Antoine had the inside which left me stuck in the middle. I had the choice to either keep full speed and gybe at the same time as both of them or to back off at the last second and let them go wide while I try to sneak inside. I normally like the latter but this would risk having the rest of the guys come barreling in on top of me and in this light wind I didn't want to get stuck under them so i kept my speed and did a wide gybe. Unfortunately it wasn't a very good gybe and it gave Ross the inside position to the next mark, and with a tight reach to make it to the second mark this allowed Ross to come down on top of me and roll me before we got to the mark. After the second mark positions were pretty much settled, follow the leader to the finish line. Looking back I think I would have done the first mark a bit different but I was going for the win not second place. I figured we would at least get two or three more rounds in so it was not such a big deal, who would have known it would have been so bad for so many days in a row????
Oh well I am still pretty happy with the way the year is going so far. My foot is feeling better pretty much every time I go sailing, I am really hoping the next training block in Maui will be a big improvement so it won't be to sore stumbling over the rocks in Gran Canaria. I have a good three weeks back at home to recharge and dial in the small gear for the Canaries. My plan is to hit the gym hard and the bike as much as possible as well as put in lots of time testing out my 5.5 and 6.2 and my 60 board and all my small fins. There is also two Maui Race Series events that I will use to tune up as well, great practice for starting and good competition there with Pieter Bijl and Phil McGain.
This is coming directly from 30,000 feet, American Airlines has internet on their flights between LA and NY and I just had to try it out. Very fast and great and killing the time, almost to LA already.