It was a brilliant last day of racing yesterday at the Caribbean Laser Midwinters Championships in Cabarete, Dominican Republic.
I’m having trouble formatting and posting pictures from my phone so please check out my Instagram feed BowOutSailing for pictures of the sailing venue and scoreboard (I didn’t take my phone out on the water for action shots!). I have also posted some pictures on my Facebook page.
First place in both fleets was decided in the last race on a tie breaker with Sweden’s Jasper Stalheim 🇸🇪 coming from behind to win the double tie breaker against Norway’s Hermann Tomasgaard 🇳🇴. There was a lot more drama in the Radial fleet that I don’t know first hand but young Dominican Republic sailor Perez Esneiry 🇩🇴 beat some stiff competition to emerge victorious - hopefully we’ll be seeing more of him.
Back in the full rig fleet Elliott Hansen couldn’t quite edge out Lorenzo Brando in an all British National Team 🇬🇧 tie breaker for 4th. But what happened to two time world champion Nick Thompson? I heard second hand that he had an upper body injury and left the Dominican on the second day of the competition. I hope he is okay.
A bit further back in the fleet it came down to the last race between Canada’s John Owen and Dominican Republic Olympian Raoul Aguayo tied for 7th place and Ian Elliott (myself) and Ari Barshi tied for 9th Place. Ari and I had been tied going into the day and I had won the first race of the day by one spot and he had won the second by one place. In that race I had had a nice lead but failing to learn from Fillah’s mistake at US Nationals, I had allowed him to separate towards what I thought was the unfavourable side near the top mark. His shift however came in and he caught right back up and passed me. So now it was all coming down to the last race. On the first downwind Ari and I were neck and neck with the lead potentially changing at every big wave 🌊 and at the leeward mark Ari and I were within a boatlength. On the upwind I had a loose cover on him but then I sailed into a juicy knock with pressure that Ari didn’t seem to be sharing.
I’m having trouble formatting and posting pictures from my phone so please check out my Instagram feed BowOutSailing for pictures of the sailing venue and scoreboard (I didn’t take my phone out on the water for action shots!). I have also posted some pictures on my Facebook page.
First place in both fleets was decided in the last race on a tie breaker with Sweden’s Jasper Stalheim 🇸🇪 coming from behind to win the double tie breaker against Norway’s Hermann Tomasgaard 🇳🇴. There was a lot more drama in the Radial fleet that I don’t know first hand but young Dominican Republic sailor Perez Esneiry 🇩🇴 beat some stiff competition to emerge victorious - hopefully we’ll be seeing more of him.
Back in the full rig fleet Elliott Hansen couldn’t quite edge out Lorenzo Brando in an all British National Team 🇬🇧 tie breaker for 4th. But what happened to two time world champion Nick Thompson? I heard second hand that he had an upper body injury and left the Dominican on the second day of the competition. I hope he is okay.
A bit further back in the fleet it came down to the last race between Canada’s John Owen and Dominican Republic Olympian Raoul Aguayo tied for 7th place and Ian Elliott (myself) and Ari Barshi tied for 9th Place. Ari and I had been tied going into the day and I had won the first race of the day by one spot and he had won the second by one place. In that race I had had a nice lead but failing to learn from Fillah’s mistake at US Nationals, I had allowed him to separate towards what I thought was the unfavourable side near the top mark. His shift however came in and he caught right back up and passed me. So now it was all coming down to the last race. On the first downwind Ari and I were neck and neck with the lead potentially changing at every big wave 🌊 and at the leeward mark Ari and I were within a boatlength. On the upwind I had a loose cover on him but then I sailed into a juicy knock with pressure that Ari didn’t seem to be sharing.
Segue...
On Saturday the regatta’s sailors were treated to a debrief by British Laser National Team Coach Chris Gowers, coach of reasonably good sailors Sir Ben Ainsley🥇, Paul Goodison🏆, Nick Thompson🏅. Anyway he had an interesting point that in very strong fleets where everyone is doing most everything right (my part of this the fleet may not quite have met this standard) it comes down to who can figure out or intuit when to break the classic rules and truisms of sailings. So I’d like to couch my next decision in the veneer excellence by invoking Chris Gowers...
Once again I decided to split with Ari and not learn from Fillah and not ‘stay between your competition and the mark’.
This time it worked and I gained enough that even with Ari’s consistent edge in downwind speed, he couldn’t close the gap and so I came out ahead in the regatta.
The last downwind was also exciting because John and Raoul had rounded the last windward mark close together and close in front of me so I could see it play out. In spite of Raoul’s excellent downwind speed John momentarily passed him and it was looking like John Owen and Ian Elliott were both going to win our battles in the final race but Raoul’s veteran skill in the Cabarete swell pulled through again and he passed John again at the last minute before he final turning mark and they screamed in to the finish together on the final hot reach with Raoul edging John out.
