Star Sailors League Finals - Light airs make for an exhausting Day 3

by Paul Cayard on 2 Dec 2016 Three races were held today on Montague Bay for the Star fleet. The southeasterly winds were considerably lighter than the previous days at eight knots dropping to as little as four knots by the end of the day.

Mark Medleblatt and Brian Fatih sailed very consistently to take the lead in the series while Robert Scheidt, Diego Negri and Xavier Rohart each had at least one bad race.

Josh and I had a better day with all three races in the top 10. Contrary to what one might think, light air is very difficult. A little wind shift or change in wind velocity makes a huge difference. The turbulence off the sails produces relatively more impact than in stronger winds so managing your position on the race course and relative to the fleet is critical. And finally, you have to sit very still and concentrate which is exhausting in the heat here in Nassau.

One other feature for the second and third races of the day was that rule 42 was in effect as the wind lightened. This eliminated the downwind gymnastics that were employed in the first seven races. The on the water umpires were very attentive and penalized a few boats for violating rule 42. To not violate rule 42 (pumping, rocking and ouching) in these conditions you pretty much have to sit motionless downwind unless you are gybing.

With our better performance, Josh and I moved up to 15th overall but we are still 14 points out of the critical 10th place to qualify for the quarter finals on Saturday. The forecast for tomorrow is for very light winds again. Two races are scheduled to finish the qualification series.

Results:

NO.	Skipper	Crew	SSL PTS	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	R7	R8	R9	Q	S	F	Total
1	Mark Mendelblatt	Brian Fatih		4	7	1	2	5	4	5	1				24
2	Diego Negri	Sergio Lambertenghi Riva del Garda		2	1	13	4	2	19	2	3				30
3	Robert Scheidt Sao Paulo	Henrique Raul Boening		7	2	3	3	1	16	11	5				33
4	Xavier Rohart Thionville	Pierre-Alexis Ponsot		1	15	4	11	16	2	6	2				51
5	Sime Fantela	Antonio Arapovic		10	16	6	7	15	1	21	4				74
6	Mateusz Kusznierewicz	Dominik Zycki		16	6	5	9	23	12	3	14				74
7	Johannes Polgar Wenden / Sauerland	Markus Koy		5	12	9	14	20	6	13	15				78
8	Tonci Stipanovic	Ante Sitic		19	3	2	6	7	14	16	13				80
9	Facundo Olezza	Frederico Melo		13	8	8	5	9	24	25	9				81
10	Jonas Hogh-Christensen	Steve Milne		6	4	16	12	6	17	22	18				85
11	Augie Diaz Havana, Cuba	Arnis Baltins Washington, DC		22	11	12	8	21	3	10	6				90
12	George Szabo	Edoardo Natucci		24	13	7	10	18	9	7	20				92
13	Vasilij Zbogar	Zsombor Berecz		18	14	10	1	4	18	20	12				93
14	Taylor Canfield	Mark Strube		15	22	22	19	3	5	8	16				99
15	Paul Cayard	Joshua Revkin		17	17	15	16	13	8	9	8				99
16	Robert Stanjek Rdersdorf	Frithjof Kleen		9	20	20	21	10	15	1	11				107
17	Torben Grael	Guilherme De Almeida		21	5	17	15	14	13	4	23				111
18	Nick Thompson	Steve Mitchell		14	10	14	13	22	11	18	22				123
19	Jorge Zarif	Bruno Prada		3	18	19	26	26	7	24	21				127
20	Sam Meech	Craig Monk		25	19	18	24	8	10	15	10				130
21	Eric Monnin	Pascal Rambeau		20	24	24	17	17	21	17	7				135
22	Caleb Paine	Ian Coleman		23	9	11	22	12	22	23	24				139
23	Jochen Schuemann	Ingo Borkowski		8	25	21	18	24	25	12	17				143
24	Hubert Merkelbach	Claus Olesen		11	21	25	23	19	23	14	19				144
25	Tom Burton	Andrew Palfrey		12	23	23	20	11	20	19	26				152