Early in the morning the lake was dead calm (like a mill pond) with a fair coating of cloud. Much debate was going on in the Anglo-Hellenic household as to what this meant for the day's wind.
It turned out that no-one had much of a clue.
At the skippers briefing the President of the yacht club put our minds at rest by announcing that these were good signs for good breeze in the afternoon.
We headed out early for the first start, sailed half a lap with the newly tweaked Tornado and returned to get the 5 minute signal from the committee boat.
The decision was made early on to be extremely conservative on the start line, just to get away clear with not too much interaction with other boats - this seemed to work very well.
We got away well and as soon as we had a clear path, tacked onto port over to the favoured side of the lake. It was soon becoming apparent that we were standing well in the fleet, pointing well and going fast.
We reached the windward mark in 4th (not bad for our first go in a tornado race) got the kite up and then off we went.
The tactics on the course became pretty one sided, always up the west side (just like everyone had told us) easy.
Race 2 we got away not quite as well but managed to get clear air after a minute. Then our 'mates' Dannis and Kostas tacked on top of us and pretty much gave us the dirtiest zeus bar toilet smelling wind imaginable up the first half of the beat.
Wind gradually eased throughout this one, still double trapezable but not enough for our extra weight to come into play.
First race 10th
Second race 11th
Dannis and Kostas fully dominated both races finishing a good 500 meters in front of the next boat. Unless they get bored i can't see that anyone will beat them.
Our other Greek team-mates Alex and Nikos finished 6th and 7th. I'm not going to mention that they weigh 35kg (you don't have to weigh in at registration) less than us which helped them to get past us both races on the downwind leg.
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Courses - upwind, spreader, downwind gate, upwind, spreader, downwind gate, upwind, spreader, downwind finish.
Each race around an hour - certainly makes one feel that a jug of rose at Alexanders hasn't actually done you that much good.
We went out after the racing was finished to get some photos as we felt it wasn't appropriate to be farting around with camera on the first day of racing.
Going down the spreader just ahead of Nicos and Alex
Tuesday will be 3 races - better man up!
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