KULA 470

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Wet Coast Sailing Team Follow us on our journey to be a top ten team at the 2022 Melges 24 World Championships.

Well we are back in London and ready to head home early tomorrow! Sail For Gold was a great regatta and by far the toughest we have sailed this far. Excellent competition and amazing conditions made this event very enjoyable for both Erik and I. We did not preform as well as we hoped and will not be going to the pre-olympics as a result as only the top Canadian team gets to go.

This was a big disappointment as we were moving faster then in the first race and were hoping for that top 10 finish that has alluded us at a big event so far. We did manage to hold off about a third of the boats behind us with good downwind speed and good tactics on the second upwind good for a 26th. Tomorrow is supposed to be even lighter which is what we like from all the training at home.

The second race of the day was in a bit more breeze and we once again were having a great beat and were in about 5th 2/3rds of the way to the mark when we came off a wave and our Jib dropped 4 inches. This was due to a swage coming loose on the luff wire and there was nothing that could be done other then to keep going at a much slower pace upwind.

Day 4 of S4G now over. Yesterday we had a super windy day and didn't do well as is normal for us in those conditions. Today was lighter and we did much better with a rounding in 6th in the first race which we then managed to finish 13th after losing a few boats around the course. This has been our best finish at a grade one event so far!

Today was a bit breezy and we did not fair that well although we did have much better starts. We worked the correct side of the course for the first race and had great first rounding but slowly fell back due to a lack of boat speed. The second race we were not happy with but that happens sometimes. This is by far the toughest fleet we have yet raced against and are super happy to be here.

Two days in now at S4G. Yesterday was on the light side and we had great speed though suffered from bad starts. The first race we had worked hard to pass boats but lost most of them at the last mark in a very crazy rounding with people pushing off of each other. Second race we held on to our recovery after the start and managed to finish the day as the top Canadian of the 5 teams here.

Had a great sail today, the boat was feeling good in the 10-13knts and confused seas we had out at our course today. We didn't get to line up with anyone upwind but showed good speed downwind against a Aussy team. The tensions are running much higher then normal at this regatta as it is the beginning of the Olympic qualifiers for many countries.

We then got ready to go sailing but as we were hoisting the main the splice from line to wire for our halyard lock failed and we lost the halyard through the mast. We then had to take the mast down run a new halyard and re-rig, this was a four hour process even without any problems. Now we must sleep as we are still a bit jet legged.

Bit of a tough day for us as we didn't get sailing which we really wanted to do. We got down to the sailing center early and got the mast all tuned in and got registration which is always a huge hassle done early enough to go for a good sail.