Star World Championships in Varberg, Sweden - Day 2
by Lynn Fitzpatrick 3 Aug 2009 22:29 BST
2-9 August 2009
An American team led around every mark of the second race of the 2009 Star World Championship. Mark Mendelblatt and Mark Strube (USA) suffered a little more heartbreak today as they watched their 100 + yard lead vanish during a second run on which the fleet experienced a bit of rotation, shiftiness and the crossing of a current line. While Mendelblatt/Strube went high on the run, George Szabo and Rick Peters (USA), Flavio Marazzi and Enrico De Maria (SUI) and Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada (BRA) went low and found the passing lane. The three kept their jets on and played the right side up the final beat in 4-5 knots of lumpy swells and rainy gray conditions.
Scheidt/Prada approached the finish line from the starboard layline and tried to time shooting the line with the precision of Michael Phelps gliding into the wall, but Szabo/Peters were able to slowly chug across the finish line on port and pull off the win. In Szabo's words, "What a difference a day makes." He was quite pleased with the San Diego-like conditions and the win as opposed to his 54th yesterday.
Marazzi/De Maria showed independent thinking on the runs, around gates and up weather legs to move into fifth by the bottom of the first run and continue to hold their own while others slid or went into a free fall ahead of them.
Today's race got under way under a black flag following a long postponement on shore, an abandoned race due to a big shift immediately after the start, a general recall. Grey, wet, gloomy, chilly and limited visibility sum up the afternoon. Irish crew, Anthony Shanks, was emphatic and not sarcastic when he said, "you needed aids to navigation out there." The Swedish and Danish shorelines disappeared with the mist and the rain and many got disoriented with all of the shifts.
After two races, Marazzi/De Maria are leading by posting a predictably consistent 3, 3. Freddy Lööf and Johan Tillander parlayed a mid teens first beat into a fifth by the end of the race and remain in second place overall with a 2, 5 so far in the series. Mendelblatt/Strube are in third with 12 points. Mateusz Kusznierewicz and Dominik Zycki (POL) have settled into fourth place after posting a 12 for the day. Despite dropping from second at one point in today's race to ninth, Hamish Pepper and Craig Monk (NZL) are in fifth overall with 20 points.