Yesterday saw the second day of the ECWF Hatteras, with freestyle before noon and racing in the early afternoon. Results will be announced tonight at a party at the Mad Crabber in Avon, but it seems quite certain that Andy Brandt and Nina won the freestyle competition.
We had about 18-20 knots for the racing. Here's the course from my GPS tracks:
Total course length was 3 km (just shy of 2 miles). My top speed was around 29 mph. I was behind Keith and Andy in three of the four races; in one race, I managed to come in second after Keith. Keith had the best starts and was first at the first jibe mark in at least three of the races; Andy had the better jibes and won two races. My jibes were dry, but mostly quite poor, and my re-acceleration after the jibes was much slower than Keith's. I shortened the distance between us on most legs thanks to higher top speed, but could never get ahead of him. The speed tracks above show that it took me almost 30 seconds to get back to speed after most jibes - way to slow. Now I know what I have to work on for next year!
In the first race, I started with a beach start right at the pin end, but I forgot to properly orient the board in time. When I straightened it out during the last seconds before the start, I ended up over the start line. Unfortunately, I could not see the lower mark because of several sailors in between, and neither could I hear the announcements from the boat, so it was not until I crossed the finish line before I heard that I was over early. I was not worried too much about it because I assumed that we'd have at least one discard with 8 races. That later turned out to perhaps be overly optimistic .. which would have meant that Nina (or perhaps somebody else) would have pushed me off the third place, even though I finished second or third in the other seven races. Now I'll have to wait until tomorrow evening before the final results are announced...
