Thinking ahead

“For us it is about the big picture and our goal is to win this season’s championship, and the good thing about our team is that I think we all recognise that we have everything needed to do that. At the moment you have to remember that it is a little bit of a marathon, so you don’t necessarily want to be leading in the first ten miles, you want to be leading in the last mile, and so when I say that Marseille was a good regatta in a lot of ways because we did not sail very well in many ways, we made a couple of bad decisions and had a couple of other things go bad for us, and yet we still had keep-able finishes, and we did not get disqualified from any races, or have any major damage. So we just sail well enough and our boat is fast that if we are coming into a situation that is 50:50 then we err on the 50 of the conservative side rather than on the aggressive side. I think that everyone approaches things like that, but when you are coming into a mark on port tack approach and the hole opens up and you think if everything happens perfectly you can squeeze through, so it is all risk/reward at the time. All the situations are very difficult and it is a big pill to swallow, well, we have taken our fair share of transoms this season, and you are angry at the time, you know the deal, but we are going to keep with the strategy and our strategy has been to survive the first three regattas of the season without taking ourselves out of the championship.”

Quantum Racing have been one of the most consistent boats. As Hutchinson points out they have a similar score card as series leading Bribon , but a 12th in Race 3 in Marseille is weighing them down a little at the moment.

“We are just chipping away all the time.” Hutchinson says again, “There is no one thing and we are always looking at our weaknesses and improving them. We have been working on our after guard communication, and yesterday our starts at the weather end, our layline as we line up.”

Meanwhile the Russian team may be happy with their new boat USA-17, the new Rusal Synergy, which helm Sergey Pichugin (RUS) says gives them 0.37 of a knot faster upwind than their old 2006 Botin& Carkeek, but they are bitter at not being allowed to carry forward their series points. Their argument is that subsequent ultrasound testing has shown that their original boat has worse damage than was first thought.

They wrote to all the owners asking for dispensation to use the new boat .
“Everything is OK with the boat but we made a special letter to the owners and would like them to see our situation and at the moment we are not starting from fifth or seventh place, and so we would like to be saving our twelfth place and save our old points.” says Pichugin. “It is a strange feeling with a new boat, the last boat is damaged and at the moment we cannot concentrate on repairing the boat and he doesn’t understand what is happening with the hull inside.”

And on the water today it is a good sea breeze which is expected.