As predicted yesterday, today bought a long wait for the wind to drop. Eventually only the RSX and the 49er’s were to race with 3 tough races.
Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen came back the victors with a 21.6 knot top speed. Pedro de Andrade and David Aleixo also bettered yesterdays time with a 20.8.
Nathan and Iain described the moment that they hit the top speed as one ********* great big gust. The wind is still predicted to drop for the rest of the week and with it the likely hood that this speed will stand until the end of the competition.
Although the wind was up, peaking at times to the late 20’s, conditions were not ideal with a short sharp chop, the potential still remains for higher speeds but crucially perhaps not this week.
Simon
20 Knot Speed Barrior Broken
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Abandonment of Sail 4 Gold Racing Propels Teams to SEIKO Challenge
Today after racing was abandoned for the day the French team of Manu Dyen and Stephane Crisidis broke the 20 knot barrier to record a peak speed of 20.4 knots.
The 49er fleet was held on shore until just after 16.00 hours when finally with winds reaching 30 knots at times the Skandia Sail for Gold race team called the 49ers off for the day. At that moment the collective mass of sailors were suddenly ignited with a need for speed or perhaps the $5000 prize purse at stake…..
Manu and Stephane were first to launch, in fact for the second time that day as on an earlier attempt to launch the fleet they were the first and only team to hit the water, they also ignored the time restriction imposed on the teams and spent over an hour in there attempt. However there extra time was to no advantage as the wind dropped away with the Danish Toft Neilson brothers recording the second fastest time with a 19.9.
The wind is forecast to increase tomorrow with some big guys out looking to better Manu’s time, it is likely that tomorrow will be the last day in this competition as the wind will drop away into the later part of the week.
Interestingly the speed is just slightly faster than Usain Bolts average over 100 meters of 10.438413 meters per second or 20.2901871894 knots. The question will be can a 49er better that speed over a 10 second average which would closely relate to a 100 meter race?
Cheers
Simon Hiscocks reporting
