Well the light winds of france followed the tour to spain.... Almeria went very well for the team, leading at the halfway stage and finally finishing in 4th overall.
The racing was a mix of stadium racing inside the port and outside windward leeward style courses. With Mischa back on mainsheet, myself in my favoured crewing role of trim we were joined by Brad on the bow. Brad had sailed the first event of the season where the boat struggled to perform, so was as delighted as the rest of us to hold the lead after day 3. We lost count of how many races we sailed, but in the generallly downwind/reaching starts, we had really found a strength, great starts made boat speed and tactics easy and we moved from around 7th to 1st in one day.
Day 4 was not so good for us, An OCS and some boathanding errors in the course racing outside meant a bad start to the day, which proved to be one of the longest in the series history with around ten races sailed over a 6 hour period on the water.... Suffice to say we did not spend much time debriefing the day, instead eating then hitting the hay!
So going into the last day we had slipped back to 8th overall, but with very tight points between all of the teams. We again started with w/l course racing outside. We started brilliantly with 2 firsts and a second on the offshore race course. Returning inside the port again, for the growing crowds, the format again switched back to downwind starts. We sailed really well with a 7,3,10,2,4 scoreline giving us a 2 points win over Groupe edmond de rothchild and 4th place overall.
The tour now moves to Singapore for the conclusion to the 2011 series, and we go there with a bit of belief that we can get onto the podium for the last event which would be a great way to end the year.
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