Tough, tough day in Qingdao

It would be tempting to apply the old cliché of 'snakes and ladders' to the first day of the Olympic Regatta, because that is what it was.

I sat at the leeward gate of Course A, just a few hundred metres off the sea wall of the Olympic Harbour, and every time the Finn or the Yngling fleet came downwind the pecking order bore little relation to the previous time we saw them.

Watching the Finns trickle downwind in breeze of just 4-5kt in the first race was painful viewing, let alone what it must have been like to be sailing in it. Although the air temperature was 27 Celsius, the 83% humidity made it feel at least 10 degrees hotter.

The tide was running upwind at about 2kt, so the Finns were barely making way towards the leeward gate. It seemed like all 26 boats would arrive at the marks together, and indeed it wasn't far off that. Somehow Ben Ainslie managed to edge his way around the left-hand mark just ahead of France's Guillaume Florent, and once around, the current sluiced the reigning Olympic Champion up the course at (relatively) great speed.

Meanwhile the main bunch was battling to squeeze around the marks with very little air to work with. This had played into the hands of the Greek sailor Emilios Papathanasiou, who had rounded the first windward mark in 25th place, second from the back. Around the leeward gate he was 4th, a measure of just how important these leeward gates are.

With Ainslie leading upwind, it seemed like maybe he had broken his bad habit of having an atrocious start to his Olympic Regattas. He has always started badly in the past three Games, and has bounced back in convincing style to win his clutch of two golds and a silver. This time it looked like he might get it right from day one.

But as we watched the fleet ghost its way down the second run towards the finish, it became apparent that Ainslie was deep in the pack again. Papathanasiou had sailed a blinder, the man who was second last now crossing the line in first place. Ainslie could only manage 10th, not a disaster, but a poor return from a race which he had led for over half the distance.

In the Yngling race, like the Finns, the rounding positions at the leeward gate bore little resemblance to the final positions across the finish line. This was good news for the Brits, who rose from 11th at the final mark to second by the finish. The USA team on the other hand had been 2nd at the leeward gate, and a lap later were second last, 14th place.

The Aussie team sailed a consistent race, climbing up from 7th at the first mark to move through to 1st by the finish.

In the second race the tide was even stronger, and a number of Finns got too close to the start line too soon. Biggest casualty was Emilios Papathanasiou who seemed to pop his lifting rudder off the back of his boat after catching the anchor chain of the pin-end start vessel. Italian Giorgio Poggi was first round the first mark, but by the leeward gate Ainslie had snatched a small lead, again just breaking away from the area before it became fully congested.

The question was, could Ainslie hang on this time for the win? Yes he could. Where in the first race he was caught by a 20-degree shift and a big hole in the breeze, this time the breeze actually built to 8 knots and he sailed home to a 12 second win ahead of Poland's Rafael Szukiel. The Polish sailor currently leads the Finns, with Zach Railey from the USA in second, followed by Ainslie.

In the second Yngling race, the Dutch team led by 16 second around the first mark and stretched away throughout the race. At one point they led by almost two minutes and although the lead dropped on the final run to the finish, they still beat the second-placed USA team by more than a minute. As in the first race, the British team skippered by Sarah Ayton had a great climb in the latter stages of the race, moving up from 9th to 3rd on the final beat. Holding on to a 3rd place and adding the 2nd from race one puts them at the top of the leaderboard, ahead of the Canadian and Dutch teams.

It was a tense first day, and it's going to require nerves of steel to get a medal out of Qingdao. Not the most thrilling racing to watch, but nailbiting stuff nevertheless.

Booth sticking to his guns

Despite the commotion about the new 'code zero' sail, Dutch Tornado sailors Mitch Booth and Pim Nieuwenhuis are sticking to their strategy. They plan to use the upwind gennaker, especially designed for the predominant sailing conditions in Qingdao. The final decision is a weather depending call. Their measurement is scheduled on Sunday August 10^th, so they have one more day to monitor the weather forecast.

As revealed earlier, the upwind gennaker will give an advantage in speed up to 11 knots. However, on the downwind legs there will be a disadvantage with a significant smaller sail area. Booth: "But the advantage upwind makes up for the disadvantage downwind." For every Olympic Games the designing process of the best possible equipment starts all over again. Booth explains how they decided to work on the smaller and flat gennaker: "In Qingdao the current has a big effect on the race course. We already know quite accurately what the current will be. And with the predominant wind from the south east, it means that in terms of percentage the upwind leg will take a lot longer than on a normal course without current. The lighter the wind gets, the bigger the change in percentage upwind/downwind will be." If this is the weather forecast, the Dutchmen will defenitely use the code zero. Booth: "But if the wind comes from the opposite direction then the numbers will reverse and we might reconsider our strategy."

Pim Nieuwenhuis expresses the fact that they did not use a loophole in the rules: "We just designed a different gennaker that complies with the required measures." According to Booth, they don't have any doubt concerning the legibility of the sail: "Two coaches and three professional teams worked on it for a year. We all know the rules very well and we asked ourselves every possible question. In case there was only a small doubt, we would not have wasted a year of testing and developing. I have no fear that it doesn't come through the measurement."

Russian Yngling survives a Rule 69 protest

The Russian Yngling team has been lucky to get away scot free after the Measurement Committee threw a Rule 69 protest at them. The protest centred on 2kg of lead which was found under the floor of the boat, an incorrect place for corrector materials. The Rule 69 protest suggests that the Measurer believed the Russians were wilfully cheating, but the Jury felt there was insufficient evidence of this and gave the RUS girls the benefit of the doubt.

The Jury Decision reads thus: "The Jury were not satisfied that RUS had knowledge of the weight correctors in the prohibited location and therefore there is no serious breach of sportsmanship."

So, did someone else plant the lead in the RUS boat? That seems like a conspiracy theory too far, but so too does the idea that the girls thought it was worth taking the risk of planting a measly 2kg of lead in their boat, which is neither here nor there in a heavy clunker of a boat like an Yngling, even at Olympic level.

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You can have the Code Zero, but not the dolphin striker

Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby appear less likely to be using their new Code Zero gennaker after Chief Measurer Dick Batt ruled against the use of a dolphin striker on the bowsprit. In response to two questions from the Australian team, Chief Measurer Dick Batt gave the following answers to their queries about this controversial Tornado technology:


"In accordance with Measurement Regulation 1.2, the Olympic Measurement Committee met and considered the request for a ruling from Michael Jones (AUS) regarding Tornado spinnaker and bowsprit.

The following class rule interpretations were made:

Question:
Does the non-one design 'code zero' upwind spinnaker contravene the class rules?

Decision:
The concept of a smaller gennaker does not contravene the class rules. Class Rule G.5.3 does not specify minimum dimensions.

Question:
Is a "dolphin strike" [sic] permitted on the bowsprit?

Decision:

No. The addition of a compression strut and associated rigging below the bowsprit spar would contravene class rules F.5"

Note the wording carefully. The Aussies' question, describing the code zero spinnaker as 'non-one design', implies that perhaps the intention of this ruling is simply an attempt to outlaw the Dutch and American teams' hopes of using this sail configuration. There was no  need for a question to the Measurer to include the term 'non-one design' in their question. The Measurer could have worked that out for himself, and clearly he has, as Dick Batt has ruled that the concept of the sail is fully compliant with the Tornado rules, even if the supporting equipment - such as a dolphin striker - is not. So maybe the Aussie query was not to secure the right to use this stuff, more to ensure that others couldn't use it.

Word is that Austrian skipper Roman Hagara is still in a huff, and talking about holding a press conference to explain why he is threatening to boycott the Olympics unless this sail is outlawed. What a hollow gesture, if ever there was one. A case of 'not-invented-here' syndrome. Honestly, why is the bloke worrying? As Sparky pointed out in my latest SailJuice Xpress newsletter, is a string of first places and a string of last places the way to go about winning an Olympic Gold medal?

Will the Yanks or the Dutch really be brave or mad enough to use one of this sails. Mitch Booth has said he will watch the long-range weather forecast closely until the time comes for him to measure in his sails. But is he playing a bluffing game simply to throw his rivals off the trail with some false bait? If he is, then he has played a blinder, because Hagara has swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker.

Storm brewing in the Tornado fleet

It seems the Tornado is not going to leave the Olympic Games quietly. As the Olympic cat faces up to its last appearance in the Games, it is also going through a final and potentially decisive phase of equipment development.

When Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby went out with their hastily constructed copy of the  small and flat 'Code Zero' style gennaker yesterday in Qingdao, they blew their opposition off the water, winning the training race in 3 to 4 knots' breeze by more than half a leg of the course.

Reigning Olympic Champions Roman Hagara and Hans-Peter Steinacher have not taken kindly to this latest development, initiated by the Dutch and USA teams who have been working on these sails in secret for the past few months. The disgruntled Austrians have threatened to boycott the Olympics. Whilst they are the only ones to be threatening such a move, other teams have put their names to a protest letter to ISAF, requesting that use of these radical new sails be disallowed.

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