A Warm Up full of learning opportunities
The first race of the season, the Sardinha Cup has 3 stages: the Warm Up, a 24h race, followed by 2 four day long races separated by a few days.
The warm up took place today, 31st of March. In very light winds, our 2 Figaro rookies, learnt a lot in a very experienced fleet. They finished in 30th place, leaving plenty of room to improve in the coming races.
Conrad Colman - Skipper " For our first ever Figaro race, Seb and I knew we had a lot on as we had a new boat and a new fleet to tackle. In contrast to the long ocean races that we are used to, the Figaro is a short fleet race where boat on boat tactics come to the fore and wins and losses from navigational strategies hinge on metres, not miles.
We were not disappointed. We came to learn and got schooled in the process! We were a little conservative at the start, got stuck in traffic and were slow in the light conditions due to some mast settings we are still working on. However, we had periods where we were very fast and gained distance back on the best boats in the fleet so there's promise for the future.
The next race starts next Tuesday so now we are debriefing what we learned, making a few tweaks for the next leg and resting up to be ready to take on the most competitive fleet in offshore racing."
Sebastien Marsset - Co-skipper " Frustrant mais enrichissant. Je crois que ces deux mots définissent notre warm up. Malgré un résultat sportif décevant nous avons beaucoup appris et aussi pris du plaisir lors de cette régate. Vivement la prochaine pour mettre nos enseignements à profit !"
© Thomas Deregnieaux / Ethical Power
