We headed back on the water this afternoon for a 3 pm start (and I had just found a good place to nap). There was about 6 knots of wind from the North and the current was still ebbing. The yellow fleet's first start was a general recall; the second was postponed as a 20 degree right shift came down the course. At about 3.30 they started and we were next. The flood tide was just starting but it came in quickly! Between the yellow fleet's start and ours we watched the race committee boat rotate 180 degrees on its anchor. Our first start wasn't spectacular, we under-estimated the strength of the current and didn't accelerate soon enough. We tacked out and tried to tack back in front of another boat and ended up fouling them, so took some penalty turns and continued upwind. Because we had tacked out for clear air, we ended up on the right hand side of the course even though we knew we needed to go left. However, we worked with what we had. We had fairly good speed and managed to catch back up to the fleet and rounded ahead of one boat. The rest of the race we just worked hard to stay ahead of them and tried to catch up to the boats in front of us.
The second race we actually got a decent start and had a lane until a boat tacked directly in front of us. We tacked out but remembered to get back to the left this time! The tide was now in full flood and the game was all about sailing as fast as possible into the current. The downwind legs we sailed on a reach the entire time and the upwind legs we sailed on starboard tack almost the entire time. We were ahead of several boats until a poor leeward mark rounding on the last downwind allowed two boats to get inside us. The wind had shifted farther right and we struggled to keep the spinnaker filled. The two boats inside of us made the correct call to drop their spinnakers and got us just at the line!
The third race we had a good start, held our lane and went fast on starboard tack all the way to the windward mark. We were up in the mix with the rest of the fleet! This was amazing but also stressful - we aren't used to coming back into the windward mark on the port layline and dodging boats in 5 knots of current and 5 knots of wind! We took a few sterns and tacked late but got around the mark cleanly. The downwind was good and we came into the leeward mark still surrounded by boats. Needless to say with little practise in this kind of traffic we were slowly slipping backwards in the fleet. By the reach leg the wind had almost completely died off. By now it was 7 pm and the light was fading behind a giant black cloud moving in. With the wind dying off and shifting radically, the race committee abandoned the third race and we headed home.
It was a very long day of sailing - but a really good learning day. We can now get off the start line and point upwind which is a huge improvement over Miami OCR's. There are many other boats in the fleet around the same speed as us so we are confident we will be able to improve on today's results.
Scoring explanation - the first part of this regatta is the seeding round. The fleet is split into two fleets (yellow and blue) every day based on the results of the previous day so that the fleets are relatively equal (the first day it is done based on World Cup rankings). The two fleets sail separately but are scored together. After 6 races the results determine who will race in the Gold Fleet and the Silver Fleet. The same thing occurs in the Men's division, except with more boats they are split into three fleets. For the seeding round the women and men sail on separate courses - one to the South of the shipping channel, and one to the North. After the split into Gold/Silver, the Gold Fleets will race on the same course (whichever one the RC decides has better wind) and the Silver fleets will sail on the other course.
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