Hobie 16 World Championship – Finals – Day 1
Hello Race Fans!!
Last night was the “Cut Party.” Traditionally, it is a party to celebrate those who made it into the final round, and make those who didn’t feel better. The party last night was an all-out grand festival with excellent food, warm sea breezes (it was held on the beach), and even dancing girls (and boys). Alberto Ponce, our Mexican host, put together an extravaganza! A few days ago, a crew started building a giant ship and stage on the beach, and yesterday they added huge speakers and lights. With puffs of smoke and fireworks coming out of the stage last night, the first set of performers were fire dancers. They held either batons or cords with fire burning at the ends. It was beautiful. Then the dancers and singers came out and they were right out of a Vegas show. Tons of beautiful costumes, lots of songs in Spanish, and great dancing.
At the end of the show, the names were read out, and Bob and I were in 20 place out of 60. That was good since we have to carry over our scores into the final round.
Today was the first day of the final round, and we had to sail every race competing against the top 60 teams in the world. Needless to say, it was a challenging fleet. One mistake and about 20 boats would pass you. The mark roundings were absolute scream-fests of people yelling in multiple languages, and the starts were like none I’ve ever been in…imagine 60 boats all lined up perfectly at the last second and then zooming off with incredible acceleration.
I won’t give you a blow by blow of our four races because I really don’t remember much about them. We had to switch boats for every race which meant that we had to tune each of them to our liking…changing trap wire lengths, changing batton tension, etc.
Unfortunately, our first race was really bad and we were almost last. It kind of set a negative tone for day… We had the boat tuned wrong, and while everyone else was double trapping, we could only single trap. We were so slow…!
Our last race went very well. We had a great start, and went up the left side of the course where the waves were flatter. (Yes, another day of 6 foot seas!).
All the course were long courses – three times around the windward mark with a downwind finish.
We started this part of the regatta in 20th place, but now we are now in 30th place. Our scores for today’s races were: 53, 18. 42, 11.
Lots of food and a very early to bed are in order so we can sail another full day tomorrow. Lots of pictures and video on the website. I heard we were in one of the videos too!
Liza
