Day 2 Update from Eliza Cleveland, sailing with Annie Nelson, USA

Hello Race Fans!!!

The weather conditions were similar to yesterday. Fairly light winds (single trapping to start out) built in the afternoon to solid, screaming double trapping. The Women and Youth sailed in the morning, and the Masters and Grand Masters sailed in the afternoon. Since we raced in the morning, the breeze was lighter than yesterday.

Race 1: We had what could best be called, a third-row start. I'm not quite sure what happened, but during the last 20 seconds we got totally buried. Needless to say, we tacked as soon as possible on to port tack and had to duck a number of boats. So once again we headed right, which really did well by us yesterday -- however it was a huge gamble given that the wind conditions were so different in the morning than they were yesterday afternoon. The right side of the course was definitely the slow side yesterday for those groups sailing in the morning -- it was full of huge holes where there was no wind apparently.

So off we went, and the further we got, the better the wind got. By the time we were at the layline, we were double trapped. To our great surprise and delight, we rounded in 5th place. We had to go twice around the winward mark and had a downwind finish, where we ended up in 3rd place. Annie Nelson (my skipper) is a total master at surfing the waves downwind.

Race 2: This time we had an unbelievable start near the boat. We were first off the line, and decided to stay with the rest of the fleet in order to cover them. Only 4 boats went right this time (probably because they saw what it had done for us in the first race). We tacked out so that our lay line would be super easy to call, and what did we find at the mark were a couple of the people who had gone right rounding first. We were third around the mark at that point. This time the course was one where we had to round the windward mark three times and finish downwind. We kept our lead, and then passed the second-place boat during one of our runs. We were really close to Pam Noriega and her mom, but didn't get a chance to pass them before the finish. We came in second!

Presently we are in third place with Pam Noriega and her mom, Martha, winning with 6 points, Rosarito Martinez and Kamil Berrios from Puerto Rico are in second place with 8 points, and Annie Nelson and I are in third place also with 8 points. A tie is broken by determining who has had a better race, and the Puerto Ricans won the first race today, so that's why they are in second place.

The entire experience continues to be fantastic. The organization is wonderful, with huge numbers of helpers on the beach. All the top guys from the Hobie Cat Company are here and along with Alberto Ponce, (our Mexican host who as spent the last three years working on this regatta) the entire regatta is running smoothly, quickly, and on time.

The food continues to be astounding, and rumor has it that the mohitos are the best anyone has ever tasted. Every night we have videos that were taken during the races, and for the last two nights we've been given "chalk talks" by the current world champion, Gavin Colby who has completely blown most of us away with new ways of tuning the boats.

Tomorrow is our last day of racing, and the Women will most likely sail in the afternoon when it promises to blow once again.

Liza Cleveland

For results, pictures, video and commentary go to the Hobie Worlds web site:
http://www.hobieworlds.com/h16-2004/default.asp