27d47.034N 015d20.832W
We enjoyed a good start at the committee boat end of the line having been the first boat to hoist the kite.As expected, the big boats, which are much faster, soon got ahead of us. We were pleased to note that we were able to stay ahead of a few boats that shoud have been faster, however!
We are racing on handicap, for those not familiar with our sport. Larger boats are faster, according to the laws of physics, so in order to race against faster boats we get a handicap rating. Our handicap rating tells us that we are the slowest-but-one boat in this fleet. A boat's elapsed time is multiplied by it's rating allowance to give a Corrected Time. The winners are judged on the corrected time.
The picture shows the 200-boat cruising fleet behind us. Now we're nearing the southern end of the island and some of the larger cruising fleet boats are beginning to catch us.
As we're in the wind acceleration zone we're getting 25 knots of wind at times,so we're running with a poled-out headsail and making about 8 knots on average. A few minutes ago a racing yacht alongsde us tore her spinnaker clean in half. That's a very tough thing to have happened this early in the race.
let's hope it doesn't happen to us!
tom
behind+us