Team USA at the Student Yachting World Cup

October 26, 2010

Doug Webster, Director of Public Relations for Cal Maritime Academy, is in La Rochelle, France, with the school's sailing team, where they are representing the U.S. in the Student Yachting World Cup. He filed this report after today's racing:

Day three is now complete and we're at the halfway point of the six day regatta. Some quick facts as of the end of today's competition:

Our request for redress over the issue of the broken jib car/block assembly aboard the boat yesterday was denied. No reason to go into details here. It was just denied and as a result, the two tenth place finishes suffered yesterday in the second and third races stand. However with throwouts, (see below) this may not be as much of a negative factor in the end.

Today's conditions were much lighter winds. In the first race - a standard two passes windward and leeward, we wound up in a hole without much wind for a stretch and finished with a sixth.

In the second, fortune shone. Although we were in mid-pack at the time, we were able to take advantage of a multi-boat snarl-up at one of the marks when the German entry stalled trying to make the rounding in light air, leaving other boats to try and maneuver around them and avoid hitting the mark itself. Cal Maritime was coming down on the mark from a line outside of the main pack, and had a good vantage point to turn in and maneuver through a space between boats at the buoy and accelerate away, moving ahead of about five other boats. On the next leg we gained a couple of more positions and finished with a very happy second place out of the 14 boats - our best finish so far and clear proof that we can be counted among the top teams in the competition. Our finishes to date: 7 and 3 on the first day, 3, 10 and 10 on the second (with the equipment failure) and 6 and 2 today.

There was an attempt to stage a third race today - a longer distance one of about 15 miles overall down and back. However, as feared, the wind died before the end of the first leg and race officials officially halted the competition. TeamUSA was in second spot at the time, marking the second time in three days that we were close to the lead when dying winds cancelled the race. But that's sailing.

This regatta's rules allow throwouts: after five races are completed, you can throw out your worst finish so far. After nine races are completed (and that should probably be reached tomorrow, Wednesday) you can throw out your TWO worst finishes. That will allow us to discard the two 10ths we suffered after the equipment failure yesterday. If we get to 12 completed races, you can throw out three worst finishes.

Looming ahead is a question of weather Thursday and Friday. Some forecasts call for strong winds and others call for really strong winds that could cancel racing. We'll just have to wait and see. We like strong winds as a Northern California team. We'll hope for the best.

TeamUSA right now is either fifth or sixth in the standings vs. yesterday's seventh and has a good lead over the next team behind us. Watch the blog for latest information as soon as we have it from the race organizers. See http://followteamusa.csum.edu.

- Doug Webster, Cal Maritime Academy

Cal Maritime Academy is an 850-student campus of the Cal State University system, located on the Carquinez Strait in Vallejo. Their participation in this prestigious international regatta has been characterized as a David vs. Goliath effort.