Global Warming Turns Poland into Miami

Leba, Poland - August 1, 2008 - The perfect summer days here in Poland are still with us. As one Olympic team sailor commented, "Global warming has turned Poland into Miami!" Along with the perfect sunny weather here at the Allegro Cup we are also getting 10-15 knots of breeze that has given us some great racing. Today was no exception, except for the arctic-like frigid ice water…much colder than yesterday! There is also a fierce current ripping down the course, same direction as the wind.

Although we only had two races, it still managed to be a tiring but fun day. The girls started last today, and we ended up having to wait for two general recalls of the blue men’s fleet. Overall it was a day of small gains for me speed-wise, but I’m still not pointing well. I am using a RS:X sail and so is one other girl, who is on the Olympic team and very fast. The two of us are almost one-design but she definitely has an edge on both speed and pointing. On the other hand, I am starting really well in our fleet of ten. I actually won a port tack start in our second race.

After six races, the men have finished up their qualifying round, so after the two races, there was a break in the action of about one and a half hours before the qualifying round. Unfortunately, after the first race of the final round for the gold fleet, the wind died. Everyone was called back in to the beach, and the waiting game began. By this time it was close to 6:00 pm, and everyone knew that the wind wasn’t coming back, so began to derig. After derigging, we all sat around for another hour waiting for the committee to abandon racing for the day. There was a slight scare that they would actually race us again, so a few people started to rig again. However, they finally abandoned and I got to return to my tent.

My mother arrived today for a weeklong visit so I spent the remainder of the evening with her, practicing my Polish at a local restaurant. Unfortunately I confused the waiter about our orders….so he only brought my order and not my mom’s! The hazards of communicating in this crazy language….

Farrah