Kiwi team reports from Day 1 of the Platu 25 World Championships

by David Cosgrove on 30 Sep 2009
David Cosgrove reports on the first day's action from the Platu 25 World Championships:

Hi All

Below is our report from Race 1 of the world champs....

The weather in Punta Ala was spectacular for the opening day of the Platu 25 World Championships. However it was not ideal for sailing as there was now wind. The AP was flying outside the clubhouse so after rigging the boat up in anticipation of some wind we found some shelter from the sun and relaxed.

At midday the breeze had built to about 4 knots and the race comittee sounded the hooter and lowered the AP. There was still however very little breeze on the course. After waiting all day for the first race, the race committee finally got things rolling at 5pm. Due to the size of the fleet, 93 boats, the fleet has been divided into two for a qualifying series which will become a gold and silver fleet later in the week. We were racing in the yellow fleet and were the first start. We had a nice start with Simon doing a nice job of putting the boat on the front row. We built speed and headed out to the left hand side of the course.

We rounded the top mark mid fleet. After rounding the offset and hoisting the kite we went back to the left before spotting better pressure out to the right and gybing. We sailed all the way to the gate lay line before gybing back onto starboard and sailing in hot to the gate. We had mark room on several boats at the gate, one of which choose not to give us room and tried to squeeze us out. Despite this we rounded the mark nicely and headed back out to the right hand side of the course in good pressure.

We decided we needed to minimise our tacks and went all the way to the starboard lay line. We made good gains on the boats out the other side of the course. After rounding the windward mark the team sailed the offset leg really well picking up a couple more places. We bore away and hoisted and again went right looking for clean air. We gybed back with the pressure.

We gained several more places on the run resulting in a 21st placing. In general we are happy with our boat speed and tuning. The rigs the boats use in Europe are very different to what we use back in New Zealand as they are alot softer allowing more tuning. We are looking forward to some more good racing tomorrow, the forecast is for slightly more pressure.

We would like to thank our sponsor Oceanbridge, Takapuna Boating Club, Ralph Roberts and our friends and families.

Cheers
Dave and Marty.