Bassadone Clark - 470 Olympic Sailing Blog

Day 4 dawned with a northerly gradient and the promise of some wind. As the day heated, a battle started between this and a sea breeze, with us becalmed for several hours. We launched at our normal time of 11:15 a.m. and didn't get a sniff of a start until 3:45 p.m. Eventually it was the original gradient that won out, however still with some big holes and swings to watch out for. This kind of racing is a real game of snakes and ladders, it's hero to zero stuff as one side of the course looks good only to fall into a hole and the other side take their turn at leading. The first race should have been better than the 8th we got, and race 2 was a good hard fought 3rd. Again the leading Austrailians had a great day, but otherwise the fleet had an up and down day so the boats chasing for the bronze are all reasonably close with 2 fleet races left.

Day 5 sees us 15 points off 3rd place, 2 races to close the gap and then finishing off with the double point medal race for the top 10, so still plenty of potential. The first race was very frustrating and it felt like we couldn't trust our eyes; the wind Gods weren't smiling down on us. We had all the signs for a classic sea breeze day with a light northerly gradient, that had turned into a building solid sea breeze, slightly tracking right. Well, this was the case for the boys race who started 30 minutes before us in a decent 7 knots of wind. However, throughout the course of our race the breeze shifted 50 degrees left and dropped to sub 3 knots. We were on good compass numbers heading out to where there was breeze on the right of the race track, with the rest of the fleet sat in a hole to our left. The sea breeze we were seeing retracted slowly and the left (more northerly wind) filled in at the very top of the windward leg. We finished the race race in almost dis-belief at what had happened.

We had to change our strategy for these wacky conditions that we're seeing, just to qualify for the the medal race. We decided to stay exactly in the middle of the fleet, not trusting what we saw with the wind, thus minimising risk, we had a good start and were 3rd around the 1st mark. We saw a similar situation to the previous race but this time we stuck to our very conservative plan in the middle of the fleet, and only lost to 2 boats that had gone hard right - which is what we had done the previous race when it hadn't paid! As we crossed the finish line of our final fleet race in 5th place, we were apprehensive as to whether we had done enough to make the top 10 medal race.

The Austrailians had a blistering day in really tough conditions and the Gold medal is all but theirs. The Dutch in second had a slightly less steady day, dropping some points but are still relatively comfortable in silver. The Brazilians rose to the scrap for bronze going into the medal race. We have stayed pretty much the same in 9th place overall, and unfortunately didn't close the gap on a day that was full of possibilities that frustratingly didn't go our way. However, with the double points of the medal race it is still mathematically possible to win bronze - "So, you're saying there's a chance.." ;-) Although not a high probability due to relying on the other boats to finish in a certain order. Nevertheless, we're going to go out there tomorrow, still giving it everything we've got, to finish what has been a very testing regatta on a high.