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It looks very, very light.
I hope the wind will pick up between now and the start,
as it’s still early.
We’re expecting a thermal breezeand it could be a nice race,
but if it’s very light and we’re under code zero
is won’t be so much fun, as the tack changes
will be complicated and the tactics won’t be very open.
It’s such a short race that you could easily be first or last.
We’ll have to try to sail well and not make mistakes,
or as few as possible at least, sail decently
and after that it will depend on the others
a bit how things pan out!
There are a lot of phases at the start where we mustn’t take
too many risks and not get ourselves into complicated situations.
At the time a storm rolled over with 26/27 knots
under one particular cloud and the reaction
was pretty much the same on all the boats.
You had to adapt really quickly, switch sail,
decide on the right sail to get going again
and I think that’s where the race began.
We took the start with Abu Dhabi on port tack,
which is always a bit daring.
It was our instructions to get clear and power across the start line,
and I think that had a big influence on the race afterwards.
The weather models are completely at a loss
in this part of the world.
They move very quickly and the effects are very, very localised
and can come down to just one cloud at times.
To be honest, we knew we could expect anything,
which is why we had virtually all our sails aboard,
and some didn’t have all theirs as they were expecting
the wind not to pick up.
That may have cost them dearly as Camper, for example,
didn’t have the sail we used at the start,
which I reckon really put them at a disadvantage.
The most complicated thing was to sail some fine laylines,
which equates to putting in the fewest number of tacks
to make the mark and manage the right point to change tack.
It wasn’t easy.
We did a good job, together with Laurent.
Using my computer I tried to help out a bit and see
what the computer was suggesting,
whilst he adjusted that by feeling.
He did a great job, especially on the first leg,
which enabled us to get past Abu Dhabi and catch up
with Telefonica very quickly.
There was a very good atmosphere aboard,
which was both calm and confident.
We managed to anticipate the manoeuvres pretty well,
at a good pace.
We had a really fine team aboard today.
The better things went for us, the more the conditions
modified dramatically again and the wind
completely died away, which we had to adapt to.
Whilst we were leading, we fell into lighter winds
a bit sooner than the others.
In that instance, we didn’t react quite as quickly as Abu Dhabi,
so they sailed a very fine race and are often in
on the action in these In-Ports,
even though they have less success offshore.
They got past us on what was the final sprint to the finish really.
We manoeuvred well, which was certainly our strong point
at the start of the race.
We’ve become a good team at manoeuvring.
We’re progressing everyday with the help of Thierry Peponnet.
Telefonica did a very bad job, a long way behind,
and the same was true of Puma and Camper,
so we managed to score some points.
We did a really great job today and essentially it came down to spirit.
We’re showing that even in this type of In-Port race,
we’re capable of doing very well and the others should perhaps
start to fear us in this domain.
In any case, we’re beginning to gain in confidence
and that’s a very, very good thing.