Rain and shifty 12-20kt winds were the standard on both 49er courses for day two of the qualifying series of the European Championship in Gwdnia, Poland.
The race committee decided to go for 4 races today because of the dubious long-term weather forecast.
Jesse and Zander Kirkland started the day in 53rd but fell to 68th following finishes of 28th, 32nd, 30th and 31st.
Zander Kirkland said, “The Highlights from today, were we had a couple of decent starts, our acceleration off the line is improving and we are moving closer to consistently getting off the line, full powered up. We hit a few shifts around boats. Its not rocket science out there, the top boats miss shifts and you can hang with them sometimes even if they are a little faster and more polished We also looked more comfortable getting low(powered up) and locked in the downwinds when breeze on and we had some all around great practice for us between going through the motions of tacks,gybes, roundings to tactics both up and downwind.”
“Now the things we need to improve on are Tacks/Gybes in pressurized situations, Laylines off the wind(this becomes very difficult when a 20kt puff hits after a initial 12kts and you have to fall off an extra 20 degrees and no longer lay the leeward mark. Add in some boats coming upwind and it gets a little hairy) and Cutting losses (if we make a mistake, being able to recover and minimize the compounding of the loss),” concluded Zander Kirkland.
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