Many think that in Olympic sailing the political powerhouse classes are the Finn and Star. The Finn fleet even used to include the current IOC president Jacque Rogge. The Star was even ousted from the Olympic roster, but lobbying got it back in.
However, we now know the fleet with the strongest union is the RSX sailboard.
Yesterday at the Delta Lloyd regatta most classes completed 3 races and some in the Laser did 4, bringing total on-water time for some sailors to 10 hours – quite a long workday!
However, the sailboarders did just two 30 minute races (as determined by their class rules)!
Meanwhile, Estate Master team Mal Page and Matt Belcher had some good scores but were caught trying just a little too hard in the third race of the day and received a second black flag penalty. However, the team is little concerned about scores at this stage in their program.
Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen improved markedly on their first day scores, with a 5, 9, 1 yesterday to lie 9th overall in the 49er fleet.
“It was a much better day out there for us today,” said Outteridge. ”It’s different sailing in such a big fleet of 50 boats, you make one mistake and suddenly you’re back in the 20s so we just kept chipping away.”
“In the last race we finally got a bit of fresh air up the first beat and were in the top three at the first mark, from there on we kept on sailing through them and it was pretty nice to find some fresh air out there.”
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