After working hard on some small rig adjustments, we were keen to see the improvements in speed. With a clear start in the first race we were forced to tack out early by the TP52 Panthera, with her rating of 1.342 she owes us 13 minutes per hour and with such a big speed difference it’s very hard to sail against her.

 

We enjoyed the much improved height and speed with our new rig set up and it showed with a solid lead after two beats on our main rivals Jammy Dodger and Uxorious.

 

We had to settle with a second though on handicap, as Panthera did another runaway race, she just has too big a bandwidth to compare against her. 

 

The second race of the day saw an eventful start, as a massive gust caught us and the boats surrounding us on the first run. The wind increased from 22 knots to 35 in a matter of seconds, lifting us at the same time. This caused us to broach as well as the boats in our vicinity. We struggled with the recovery and had to sail the remainder of the leg without a spinnaker which cost us dearly.

 

We managed to claw back some, but still had to settle for a 6th our lowest score so far. The good news was that we still faired better then the others and increased the lead in the overall score by one point.