Practice race day from the Medcup Portugal in Portimao

3:31 PM 0 Comments

Today was a good solid practice day for us on the GP42 Roma 2. We were able to sail for a bit pre-race in a light but building breeze with some of our old sails. It’s always nice to start out slowly in light breeze. The actual practice race started in around 9 knots. For sure we were a bit disadvantaged in those light conditions using our old practice sails so it was nice to be mixing it up with the top boats. The wind built to around 15 knots mid race which suited us a bit better. We had a really nice little tacking duel with Islas Canarias Puerto Calero out near the right lay line which saw us gain slowly each time but without enough runway to make anything solid out of it. The bottom of the first run included some close action with Caser-Endesa around the left gate mark where we pushed for room and forced them off to the right. Probably on a race day this would have gone to the protest room. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. We finished a boat length behind Puerto Calero, and one ahead of Caser-Endesa .

Overall we feel pretty good about the day. We feel like we’ll be strong when we get into our race sails tomorrow, and we have plenty of small things to work through which is always good. The boat work list was very short so all in all a good day on the water.

Tomorrow, race day 1 for us, should have a similar building wind speed during the day although it could pack a bit more punch. Stay tuned for Day 1 results. Fingers crossed.

Patrick Shaughnessy