Happy Oman National Day!

http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/oman-marks-national-day-without-sultan-qaboos

Another beautiful light sea breeze today. It started out farther left than yesterday at about 340 degrees as opposed to 45. It slowly clocked right as it got stronger in the afternoon, but never quite as far as yesterday. I sailed two practice races. The first turned out well by playing shifts up the middle and going left on the downwind (I finished second!). The second one I was mid-fleet using the same game plan. At one point during that upwind, I tacked on the lee bow of a pack of three starboard boats, and I think that was a mistake. Peter is always telling me to be wary of ever lee bowing since you get pinned. Well they pinned me heading back towards the middle and I think I sailed a knock for a while, I'm not sure. In the end, the right side payed quite a lot that race, so ducking that pack of boats might have been a better move. At least I would have had the freedom to tack when I wanted to. I talked to Pernelle from France after racing and her opinion was that playing shifts was important, but that you shouldn't tack on every single one since the edges of the course tend to pay. Brenda Bowskill from Canada won the first practice race by going left, playing the shifts up the left side, and passing boats on the downwind. I was right behind her on the downwind to the left of the whole fleet. We sailed by the lee on starboard almost the entire run, only gybing to come back to the mark by the lee on port for about 10 or 15 boat lengths. She thought there was better pressure on our side, and maybe some current advantage. I think we also sailed less distance.

Measuring in:

A girl from the Ukraine working with the sail measurer to fix her country code letters. I had to fix mine too - its not easy to peel and reapply 6 letters!