Worlds Day 4 - Did you buy your lottery ticket?

As we anticipated, the strong northerly wind yesterday was cancelled out by a strong sea breeze, and we actually went ahead with a race in quite light winds. One problem with that situation is that there are very big wind shifts when two strong winds are nearly cancelling one another out - we often found ourselves sailing directly up the middle of the course towards the top mark.

We started very near the committee boat, in the second row of boats. The front row of boats were soon a good five boatlengths ahead - it's really crucial to be among those leading boats, but on the other hand the huge bias meant that we were better off being 30 metres behind the leading boats at the right end of the line rather than in the front of the boats at the wrong end. Once we were able to work our way out into clear air, we had a good beat, making the most of the wind shifts to find ourselves mid-fleet at the top mark. The first run went well, too, as we sailed deep to get into clear air in the middle of the course and then worked ourselves into a good spot to be able to round the port rounding mark of the gate. Unfortunately this turned out to be a bad choice: there was a big left-hand shift during the second beat which meant that everyone who went left was at the top mark ahead of everyone who went right. As we were in the latter group we were back with the back markers again.

The reaches were more successful in pulling back some places. We got to the wing mark with a few boats inside us so we ended up taking quite a wide rounding and doing the second reach well downwind of most of the other boats, who were all fighting one another and and forcing one another higher and higher. We were able to sail in clear air directly for the mark, and picked up a number of places. After rounding the bottom mark we made a short hitch up on starboard and then tacked onto port. By this stage the wind had gone so far to the left that we were sailing directly up the course for most of the beat. Towards the top mark it started to go to the right, but then things went to pieces. The wind dropped out completely, and came back from a different direction: for a while we were sailing with spinnakers to get to the top mark! At the mark rounding itself there was a fair bit of mayhem with barely enough breeze for steerage way, which made keeping clear of boats with inside rights very tricky. Of course, there was no risk of damage in any resulting knocks, as the boats were moving so slowly. Fortunately the breeze did come back and we were able to reach across to the offset mark and use kites to get down the run. Again, we made decent time on the run and were well-placed at the bottom mark.

At the bottom mark they signalled a change in course direction, 45 degrees to the right. Again, this meant we were able to sail directly up the course for quite a bit of the beat. However, when we got to the last few hundred metres it became an absolute lottery, with light winds in very variable directions and some lethal holes to fall into. At one point a boat in front of us tacked onto port and were stuck, dead in the water with us sailing slowly towards them on starboard. They had to scull with the rudder to get out of our way, but it seemed churlish to protest them when their actions had allowed us to sail past them to get to the only finger of breeze we could see and reach. Sadly, that finger of wind didn't get us all the way to the finish, and we ended up stranded just short of the finish line watching that boat and half a dozen others on either side of us sailing up to the finish while we waited for the breeze to reach us. In the end we finished in 70th, but we must have been 20 places higher at times during the last beat, and come to that we could easily have been stuck in that hole near the finish for even longer and watched half a dozen more boats pass us.

Today's weather is similar to yesterday's, but this time they have decided to postpone the race, using up the one race we got ahead of schedule so we will finish as originally planned with an early-starting race tomorrow. And then it will all be over bar the prizegiving and the boat packing ...