Day 4 at the Etchells Worlds – San Fran
Very good day for us. Finished second behind Craig Healy. Going quite quick after a good start. We tacked to the right a couple of minutes after the start in pretty good company. We outsped all of the guys around us, but 5 or 6 from the far left corner got to the mark well ahead of us.
From there we sailed very clean and fast to pass at least one boat on every leg, including sailing through Big Denis Conner on the last beat. Nice.
The race winner, Craig Healy, is a very good and experienced local sailor who came here to win the worlds after an 18 month campaign, but has had an OCS and a 25th. He moved up to 10th overall.
Jud Smith had another very solid race today to finish 6th. Shark Khan was noyt really sighted by us all day. He came 17th. Stuart Childerly of Pom Rock had a bit of a shocker in that he re-started the race despite their being no recall signal. He recovered to finish 16th. A big surprise has been Mr Tito Gonzales of Miami who is in third palce overall with a very consistent week going on.
So, we are now 4th after the drop races come into play. We are ten off the lead and three off the podium. Childerly is 8 points behind us in 5th. Still 2 races to go in a 72 boat fleet. Lots can happen yet… We’ll watch with some interest.
Of the other aussies, Brownie, Bruce and Guddo had a good day carding a 9th to move up to 18th. Defending champ Pete Mcneil came 33rd to be in 20th. Other Aussies are placed 31st, 47th, 49th, 55th, 62nd and 66th. Just had dinner with Sir Robert Brown and his team. Lots of laughs. Just had a phone call from the worlds best sailing coach and Head Coach for Yachting Australia, Victor Kovalenko to again support Iain and I in our sailing endeavours.
Our ring-in third crew member George Szabo (or Georgie Gazebo as he is becoming known) is going really well in helping us go forward. Geogre is a top level sailor from the Star Class and despite not having s strong background in etchells and also only understaning every third or fourth word we speak, he is doing and incredible job. Speaking of incredible… today we are going upwind in 16 knots and Iain tells us the digital compass is not working because the number has not changed for a copuple of minutes. We sugest he moves the tiller around a bit. He does that and the number changes… Nothing wrong with the compass – just some very accurate driving going on!
Righto! Bed time. Need to get up early to tune into the cricket on the computer. Let’s hope the aussies remember how to bat. Too many pommies at this regatta will give us a very hard time if they beat us.
More tomorrow…
September 9th, 2005 at 1:44 am
Andrew,
Your return e-mail has been blocked for inapproprite words or comments, re-send if you have the time to ella.r@optus.net.au
Good luck
September 9th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
Thanks for the note Dog. AFL update- Swans behind all game at SCG and playing like school girls but Geelong not much better. Started 22 points behind at the start of the final 1/4 having not got a goal since 1st 1/4. Snapped winning goal with 3 secs to go. Play the Saints next week.
Good luck in the last two races
Cheers Marty