Dean's Diary- Extreme 40's in Boston - Dean Barker reports on Day 1

by Dean Barker on 2 Jul 2011
New Zealand's America's Cup challenge is providing a very strong multihull focus. Dean Barker, Emirates Team NZ skipper and Director of www.kiwiyachting.co.nz!Kiwi_Yachting_Consultants_Nexus_AB, reports from Boston on the opening day of the Extreme40 series, in which he is helming Emirates Team NZ .

Sailing with Dean Barker are Adam Beashel (AUS), James Dagg (NZL) and Richard Meacham (NZL).

Day 1 in Boston

We are in Boston in the US after day 1 of the Extreme Sailing Series. This is the 4th event of a nine event series and the 4th new venue for me this year. It is great to sail in new places and Boston is certainly not going to prove to be an easy venue either as we race right in the centre of the City in a very compressed but spectator friendly race course.

For this event Adam Beashel has joined us in place of Glenn so that we can develop other guys within the sailing team. Unfortunately the boats were very late arriving here in Boston so our only practice was an hour before racing yesterday. Beasho fitted straight in which was great and each day I am sure we will improve.
We finished the day in 6th. It didn't feel like a great day and we just made a few too many mistakes around the course. There were a number of parking lots at the top mark and in two of these we lost a lot of places which end up costing valuable points on the leaderboard.

With four days to go there is still plenty of opportunities out on the course.

All for now

Dean

To read earlier editions of Dean Barker's blog http://www.kiwiyachting.co.nz/dean-barkers-blog!click_here


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