Day 1 of the Swan Rolex Cup started with a postponement for several hours to allow competitors to finish their cappuccinos, and talk to their brokers. Team Ottantacinque headed out to the start area, and started the process of raising sails, pinging the line, and looking cool. The cool was shortly shattered as two powerboats with cheering girls headed to us – ah yes, the wives dressed in their team red shirts. Other teams looked on enviously – first blood to us!
It was a reaching start, and we took a while to get up to speed, dropping to fourth Swan 60 out of six. At the first mark – a large rock, we did the first of several spinnaker sets of the day, and it was a good one (phew). Our good downwind speed had us catch up the boats ahead, and gybe after gybe we clawed distance back. The next upwind we overtook a boat, and then rolled into a very messy spinnaker set (which was soon sorted out) – this involved trying to hoist bits of two spinakers at the same time. Lots of islands, tacks and gybes later, we finished in third place for the Swan 60’s. Plenty learned, and looking forward to tomorrow.
At the start of Race 1 from the support boat