Well the results are in and they are not too shabby if you take into account my mistakes.

First race (where I finished twice, it was a "wide" beam reach finish from the gate.)

Despite the fact that I did do a finish after the second lap, and had to sail back to the gate, I finally ended up as 5th overall, still beating 2 F18's out of 5 F18's on ELAPSED TIME ! The 3rd and 4th place F18's were only 71 sec and 53 sec ahead of me on elapsed time. So how much time do you loose on broad reaching to the finish line (under spi), dropping the spi looking around realizing you made a big mistake, tack and sail backup to the gate and do the extra lap ?

Only the 1st place F18 had been well out of reach for me ; they finished 4 min 51 sec ahead of me. The 2nd place Blade F16 (solo) eventually finished 1 min 54 sec ahead of me but I had been leading him all the way till I made the wrong turn at the second gate passing. This would have been really close as he has better upwind speed then I have.


Second race (where I did 4 laps instead of 3 laps)

I lapped the nacra 580 and nacra 570 that were on the race course. I only sensed that something was wrong when I was well underway to the A-mark so I decided to complete the lap anyway, hoping somebody else had miscounted and the biggest portion of the fleet had just followed him to a DSQ. This wasn't to be however. Still if I multiply my elapsed time by 3/4rd, to get my time for 3 laps instead of 4, I end up at exactly the same time as the 2nd place holder, who happens to be the leading F18 that won the first race so convincly. The first place Blade F16 (solo) was leading the second place finishers by 2 min 21 sec.


Third race (where I finally did the right number of laps)

I ended up 3rd both on elapsed and handicapped, the leading F18 (2nd place) was ahead of me by 1 min 39 sec. The winner of race 3 is again our F16 class chairman with a 1 min 3 sec lead to the 2nd place holder. He is doing very well on his F16.

Also note that the leading F18 (new 2007 hobie Tiger) in our club races had recently scored a 15th place overall in a 45 boat F18 racing fleet at the 4 day North sea regatta event. I feel these sailors may be considered to be a good crew and therefor a nice bench mark. They are even a stable benchmark as they tend to be very consistant in their race results.


So afterall, I'm not at all unhappy with my racing, that is apart from my 2 blunders. If I can get this sorted then ...

Wouter