After a good nights sleep I woke to a fairly light wind and cloudy morning. We meet at the coaches hotel at 8.30 for the morning briefing, where Maurice our coach took us through the forecast and racing format for the day. We had 2 medal races and were first on the race course, so a 10.45 start. A medal race is for just the top 10 boats and each score in each short 20 minute race is doubled to try and keep the event open right up until the final race. Unfortunately because of our current standing the podium was out of reach but we did have a chance of moving up the rankings.
During the night Nacra had changed our rudder blades to the updated version, and to our horror as we left the beach we found that with the new blade in the rudder wouldn't fasten down. After a quick attempt at fixing it, we decided that we would need to go back in a replace the rudder. I haven't replaced a rudder that fast ever. Thanks to rupert for helping and lending us his!
Finally we made it onto the race course and with a little time to spare. A quick tune upwind, a set to check the spinnaker and then we were into sequence. We had a good start in the middle of the line and made some good calls up the 1st beat finding the channels of breeze in the changing conditions. 3rd at the windward mark, but a good downwind boosted us into 2nd. We were flying, great speed and boat handling, unfortunately we tacked just short of the lay line and had to double tack at the top giving away the 2nd place. After pushing hard on the final downwind we couldn't quite get the place back and finished 3rd.
Race 2, we knew we had the speed so we were pumped up and ready. We wanted to head to the what looked like the favoured right hand side, so straight of the start we tacked. We flew up the first beat rounding the windward mark in 1st place! A controlled and commanding lap saw us lead all the way up to the final windward mark where, again we tacked a little early and were forced to do another hitch. during the extra tacking one boat squeezed by. We brought her home in 2nd.
Wow what a great last day a 3rd and a 2nd, that combined with the double points system boosted us in 5th overall, A great start to our 2016 Olympic Campaign.
Home now for a week or so, get my hands back in one piece and have a bit of rest.
Check back soon for some final regatta thoughts and things that we are taking forward to the next regatta, Hyeres!