February 12th, 2020
What a fun day! We had an awesome day on the water and came away with a score line of 1,4,1 to move us up to 7th overall. With the qualifying series now finished, tomorrow we move to Gold fleet racing.
The day started with misting rain and winds around 10-12kts. The boys started the day with three races and then we headed out during their last race. We hit the water around 12:30pm and started just after 1pm with our first race. By the time we sailed out, the rain had left and the clouds began to disappear.
Our first race started with winds around 12-14kts with some puffs a bit higher. We had a great start and sailed our numbers up the course. We rounded the top mark in 1st place and managed to get a little lead when there was a small collision behind us. We led the fleet around the race course and took the race win for the first race of the day.
The second race was a little windier now, but only about 15kts maybe. We had again, another great start, but noticed the wind was getting a little shifty at this point. We looked at our compass numbers and stuck to them and our pre-race plan as much as we could. We rounded the top mark in 2nd, behind the Spanish team. Downwind, we held second place. On the second upwind leg, the shifts were getting a little more pronounced and we tried to cover what we could, but both us and the Spanish got passed by Sweden and eventually Italy squeaked in between us and Spain at the top mark, leaving us to round in 4th. The four of us were in our own little race so we were able to go fast downwind. The Italians gybed early before layline, so we decided to go a little beyond them. We made up a few boat lengths on them, but couldn’t quite catch the Italians and ended up crossing the line in 4th. We were still very happy with this result.
In the final race, the skies had cleared and the wind had picked up a little more. We changed our rig settings accordingly, had a great start, and sailed the plan we intended while watching our numbers again. We rounded the top mark in 1st with Poland and Denmark on our heals. Downwind, we pulled a few more lengths on our lead and led around the bottom mark of the course. Upwind, the two boats behind us split opposite ways so we had to decide what to do. We stuck with our guns and were able to keep the lead at the top mark. Downwind we tried to keep it simple and get to the finish line as fast as we could. We accomplished just that and crossed the finish line with our second race win for the day.
Overall, we moved up 24 places which was super exciting to see once we hit the shore. It was a great day of racing, but we know we have a lot of racing left ahead of us.
Tomorrow we move into Gold fleet racing and have three days of the final series. We are scheduled to start first at 11am, and the forecast is looking like we should have some decent breeze to race in. As promised, there should be live coverage of the racing. Click here for those details on live coverage.
You can follow the results here. And thank you to Sailing Energy for the awesome pictures all regatta long!
Anna & Paris
Henken | Tobias Sailing 
Whoohoo, awesome day!!
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