After three races on Tuesday, and despite back-to-back victories by Norway onboard the Artemis XIV on Tuesday, the team from Switzerland #219 on the ‘Ali Baba’ still led the field of 18, but was just one point ahead of surging second place Norway, and six points ahead of third place Bahamas.
At the end of the second day Renato Marazzi, a member of the Swiss team, said the light winds allowed Norway to dominate both races on Tuesday but that they were "looking forward" to day-three on Wednesday and continuing the momentum they gained on day one.
However, at the end of the fifth race on Wednesday, the lead had changed hands and Norway lead the way with 13 points, followed by Switzerland #219 and The Bahamas #19 (Gavin McKinney, Peter Hauff, Lars Horn Johannesen) with 15 and 22 points respectively. Switzerland #217 and The Netherlands-35 rounded off the top five with 25 and 29 points respectively.
Norway was third in the first race, but played the winds and the course just perfectly to come away with the win and the lead in the fifth race holding off Switzerland #219 who took second followed by Switzerland #217 in third, The Bahamas #19 and The Netherlands #26 fourth through fifth respectively.
When they hit the water for the final two races beginning on Thursday, the competition is expected to be extremely keen and the sailors try to out wit the other.
The Bahamas has three teams sailing in the championship. After five races the team Bahamas #20, the ‘Silver Fox’ (Craig Symonette, Peter Vlasov, Mark Covell) are 11th with 49 points.
The third Bahamian team of #17 the ‘Absolutely’ that includes the team of Thierry S. Huguenin, Fernando De Gardenas, and Peter Wassitsch is 14th after five races.
Huguenin, who has lived in The Bahamas for five years and is still working on attaining his permanent residency status explained that he is using an older 5.5m boat owned by Bahamian Gavin McKinney built in 1995.
"Once you check you will see that those boats that are leading are the newer boats and they sail a little better than the older models so we do have a handicap at that point because the newer boats are performing a little bit better," he said.
"You also have to consider the fact that we are an amateur crew with out any professionals onboard while most of the teams do have at least one professional onboard and that makes a difference," he said.
With only a year experience as a 5.5m skipper, Huguenin said realistically his teams expectations going into the World Championships was to try and be in the first two thirds of the fleet and I think we are going to make it at the end of the day," he said.
Another interesting story coming out of the two weeks of sailing surrounds Jeroen De Vries. Originally from The Netherlands has teamed up with the Australians for the 5.5m World Championship.
"I do own my own 5.5m back at home but to get it here I would need a sponsor and that was not available to me at the moment and skipper Gordon Ingate, 82, from Australia invited me to crew onboard ‘My Shout’ and I accepted and I am happy to be here," he said.
After five races the ‘My Shout’ is 17th with 85 points. De Vries said, "When you look at the age of the boats you will see that we have the oldest boat in the fleet and that makes quite a difference because the level of sailing is so high and sailing those boat means that you have to have a very good crew that has worked together for a long time and we do not have that, but we are getting better as the series goes on."
There are two races left in the series and the first of them will begin at 10am on Thursday morning, and if the weather cooperates, the final race will also go down today, but could just as well be pushed back to Friday.
- Austin DWI - New York DWI