Australia's Team Foreign Affair leads Newport Gold Cup into final Day

by Richard Perini on 2 Jun 2002 Richard Perini's Mumm 30, Key West winner was second in the US Mumm 30 Winter series and now leads the Newport Gold Cup after two days racing.

Richard Perini emails a second day summary.

Day 2, 14-21 knots

Well, not quite the 20-25 that was predicted, but nice days'
sailing offshore in sunshine and a fresh southwesterly. Again
the start was postponed, waiting for the wind to settle, so
again we only got 2 of the scheduled 3 races in.

We had a nice start to race 3, just down from the boat, tacked
out early and headed right. Not much difference between left
and right, but we had good speed, and led around the first mark.
The breeze freshened for the run, we held our spot and had a
clean bottom mark rounding, defended up the second beat, and
led by 50 metres around the last mark. We didn't sail the
last run particularly well, and the 2nd placed Steadfast closed
right up on us, forcing a match-race situation into the finish.
We held him off to take the gun by a few lengths.

Race 4 saw us start in about 15 knots, a little up from the pin
again with a nice lane, and again we managed to get to the top
mark 1st. We sailed much more aggressively down the run, and
stretched a little by the bottom mark. Up the final beat we had
2nd and 3rd go in opposite directions, we played up the middle,
and got into a weird patch of breeze, allowing Turbo Duck out on the
left to break through. We followed him around the last top mark,
and although we made gains down the run we had to settle for second.

That gives us 1,2,1,2 (6 points) going into the final race tomorrow,
which, unusually for this type of regatta, is a distance race
around Conanicut island, about 22 miles. Turbo Duck is in 2nd on
10 points with Steadfast on 12. Forecast is 10-15 NW.

Fingers crossed!