the early bird catches the bullet

was trawling the usual sailing websites today and i came across this little interesting nugget. it's about the Brietling Med Cup that's going on right now. It's raced on TP52s (you might remember FreeFire from this year's SSR - that's a TP52). Anyways, these boats are big money racing - a kind of a nautical arms race of boat builder wizards playing with carbon fibre hulls and rich owners splurging on exotic sails.

I got this writeup from valenciasailing.blogspot.com, commenting on the woes of one of the supposedly fastest boats of the fleet:

"One of the supposedly favorite boats, Mutua Madrileña, finished in the middle of the pack because of their inability to get into a position in the prestart that would have allowed them to carry out their tactics for the rest of the race. Although they were at the pin end, half of the fleet was there as well and when they wanted to tack they were unable since they were squeezed by four other yachts.

A fleet race with 23 boats can result extremely tricky at this level of competition. Despite the fact the Mutua Madrileña is a fast boat, they rounded the top mark 12th and the best they could achieve was to climb an additional 4 positions. According to Nacho Postigo, navigator of the team, boat speed can't do miracles. At best you can climb a handful of places but will not allow you to start 10th and win the race. " (valenciasailing.blogspot.com accessed 13 June 2007)

somehow, this struck me as very familiar. in selangor (also possibly for the J24 fleets for the coming regattas) having a good boat doesn't mean that you can do magic with boatspeed & tactics. it ultimately comes down to no mistakes and decent starts.. something to think about eh? :)