Matts Feet and Racing New Years Day

Matts Feet
Matt had reflexology today after racing, his mum may have thought his brains were in his size 8.5 feet but we know better. Matts brains are in his head mum!- but they are big feet and they did smell a bit.

Down to the Racing
Ollie would have been about 16th without his OCS, but thats life as they say in these parts. Still spare a thought for NZL legdgend JZ who scored his 3rd OCS today- oops.

Maybe the dead rat we walked past with the squashed head was an omen- but it wasn't our finest day on the race track today- sorry about that.

Race 6
The wind was building to about 10kts from 090 degrees with a bit of current pushing up the course- needed to watch out for this.
 6a Josh and Arran held lanes off the start but never got into the shifts and struggled.
 6b Matt got into a gap with 20 seconds to go on port - tacked onto starboard and looked good but   advanced, and he was OCS.
 6c Ollie at the boat had another mare of a start- yellow flag with 20 seconds to go - bit dubious as he was head to wind.  Scott made a good start from middle pin crossed the fleet on port, but went up the middle!
Race 7
Sorry everyone this was not a good race for us, apart from Scott who was about 10 coming to the finish and a windshift let 20 boats past- just as Scott was doing a 720 for a port and starboard.  

Race 8
This was joke race- really the worst worlds race I or Wilzy have  ever seen, the wind went unstable then went left and came out of a valley further left as a result the right became a nightmare  and all 3 fleets ened up merging- 6 colours, this  was not good.  The first flight saw the leaders going round the leeward gate when some sailors- and we are talking good sailors here hadn't made the windward mark.
Matt was 'dead flipping last' around the windward mark but recovered some at the finish, Josh was a creditable 20 something. Arran was DFL, Ollie was 30 plus, and Scott got stuck just behind a group at the narrow finish to finish late 20's.  Singapore were very DFL so they have protested the race for being unfair- who said sailing was fair- get a life.. 
So it could have been a better day and hopefully it will be for the second half. For those of you sitting at home- this isn't easy sailing, we would have canned race 7 and 8 back home, it was possible to nearly  fetch the windward mark from the pin when the wind went hard hard left.  Crazy but there you go.
Usually there are 2 choices on the water, tack or carry on, we have go to get smarter at positioning and the long tack.

We are doing our best to power Arrans sail up, he is just tto underpowered and even Wilzy the |North sails man here  can't get any more 'Kiwi Grunt'  out of it so the lesson is clearly the most powerful sail you can cope with in warm venues.  Even the smallest sailor here  a 30 kg midget is using a red j.  

Team Racing
We qualified as 20th country, and 5th European country for the team racing tomorrow, we think our first race is against Canada.

More news later, we gotta check out the tracking.  Alan