Snow-Hansen and Saunders at the 470 Worlds- Day Four

by Jason Saunders on 28 Aug 2009
Paul Snow-Hansen and Jason Saunders report on Day 4 of the 470 World Championships:

Day 4
Today we began racing in the gold fleet, along with the other NZ Open crew, Geoff Woolley and Mark Overington. The third crew in our team, Jo Alley and Olivia Powrie, have also made it into the Women's gold fleet.

The conditions were from eight-fourteen knots but coming off the western shore today - so very very shifty and gusty winds.

Race One
We were among 10 other boats to be caught over the start line in the last minute and therefore we were given a BFD, or a black flag disqualification. We let a more experienced Spanish crew in the fleet luff us over the line during the last 20 seconds. This meant we had to sit out and watch the rest of the boats do the race, this was obviously very disappointing, however we were able to drop this race.

Race Two
Not wanting to be over the start line again, we were very conservative and ended up not having a good start at all. With some good tactics up the first upwind we caught up to around 13-14th. On the downwind leg we managed to take advantage of a good gust and pulled ourself up to a top 10 position. The next upwind we were doing well, but missed a shift at the top of the leg and rounded 12th. The wind began to die out and become very random and flukey, and once again we managed to get in a good gust and finished the race in fifth position.

Because of the tricky conditions, a lot of the top boats had some very inconsistent results and after the day we found ourselves sitting fifth equal overall! We never would have imagined doing so well, and we are still learning heaps from the racing. The points are very close at the moment, the difference between fifth and 12th is only five points, so we have some tough racing ahead and are looking forward to it.

We would like to thank the Adastra Foundation, Sailutions, SPARC, Tauranga Yachting and Power BC, Wakatere BC and YNZ for their support.

For full results on the event website go to: http://worlds470.kdy.dk/
And for the live GPS tracking go to: http://www.tractrac.com/