Australians holding third at Star Regatta
by Andrew 'Dog' Palfrey on 7 Mar 2007
Stars at Bacardi Cup 8273 is George Szabo SW
Andrew ‘Dog’ Palfrey reports from the Bacardi Cup in Miami after another good showing on Day three.
'Another consistent day saw Iain (Murray) and I record another sixth placing today.
Yet another tricky nor’easter that swung thru an arc of 30 degrees. We had a good start, again up near the committee boat end. We did not get onto port early enough and had to battle for lanes for the first part of the beat. We then got clear towards the right and it paid pretty big. We were seventh at the mark and battled for anything between fourth and tenth for the rest of the race.
Hamish Pepper, the current world champion, is stringing together a very consistent regatta. He won today. He has good starts and pretty fast. He is also pretty smart on the race track, without taking big risks. Freddy Loof from Sweden (world champion from 01 and 04) is close behind Hamish in the overall standings. Freddy was second again today. We are coming third.
Close behind us is the Polish dudes, who have been in good form lately. Their skipper, Matuez, is a gold medal winner from the Finn class in 96. No other boats have all results in the top ten.
Our training partners from Bermuda, Peter Bromby and Bill are hovering in fourth overall. They have had good comebacks from deep positions the last two days.
Iain is much better, his influenza is easing. It seems we won’t have to bury him and so Euan and I returned the shovel to Home Depot un-used and got our money back.'
Nearly forgot the daily photo. The bloke to our windward side is George Szabo from San Diego. He has won the North Americans twice and sailed with Iain and I as our third crew member at the Etchells Worlds in San Fran in 05.
We came third there. It was a fun week. He can talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles. Some parts of what he says you can actually decipher.
This week he is sailing with Magnus Lilljedahl. Magnus won the Gold in Sydney 2000, sailing with star class legend Mark Reynolds (2 gold, 1 silver). He is pretty handy at holding a conversation too. Must be hard to fit a word in edge-ways on board USA 8273…
George and Magnus were fourth today. Nice work…
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