Audi Etchells Worlds Day 1 - Tough day for Bandwagon

1:02 AM Tue 10 Mar 2009 GMT

'Audi Etchells Worlds 2009 - START LINE' Andrea Francolini / Audi &copy

Skip Lissiman reports from the Audi Etchells Worlds, being sailed on Port Phillip in Melbourne. Day 1 was tough for the Bandwagon team.

The day belonged to John Bertrand and his team of Olympians but our day went from OK to worst, the longer the day went on.

The first race started in a light SW breeze of about seven knots and stayed pretty much the same all day with winds over the course being the determining factor in the sailing - very similar to a game of snakes and ladders - some winners and some losers.

For us the first race had us at the top mark in the top 15 boats and as we approached on starboard we got a slight tangle up with a late port tacker, past world Etchells champion John Savage, which we made pretty clear at the time we were infringed and would protest, which would later came back to bite us.

The race slowly improved to cross the line in 11th position - reasonable start to the regatta.

The second race didn't start till after 5pm - with the same breeze.

We had a nice start in the middle of the starting line with John Bertrand and a few other top boats just to leeward heading out to the centre-left of the course.

The wind seemed to favour the right side of the course and we kept getting pushed back to the left of the course by the stream of starboard tack yachts and went around the top mark 'deep' in the fleet (55th place) after losing 15 boats on the run downwind we recovered to finish a disappointing 49th.

Despite the result we thought we sailed the boat pretty well - just felt we didn't get the favoured side on the first of four legs of the race course.

Once ashore at about 7:00pm we had enough for the day and headed off - completely forgetting about the protest we should have lodged against John Savage for infringing us at the top mark.

At 8:30pm we got a text message from the regatta organisers to say John Savage is protesting us for hitting the top mark the first time around when we got tangled up with him and we need to be at the Yacht Club in 45 minutes for the protest hearing.

At the protest a completely different version of what actually happened was described by John Savage and his two Melbourne based witnesses and the international jury believed them and not my version as well as backed up by Tessa Parkinson and Keith Swinton on our boat and we were disqualified for hitting the top mark - we were gutted!

A later look at the race plots on Tack Tracker - a software program which has a GPS transponders on each boat in the fleet vindicated our version of what happened approaching and rounding the mark - but that is yacht racing.

Today - day 2 - is another day.

The wind is light but with a later start - 2pm -so am expecting a little more wind than yesterday 7 - 12 kts SW - just have to go the right way the first beat as that is critical in a fleet this size and with this much depth of talent.

Safe sailing - Skip Lissiman

The team of BANDWAGON would like to thank our sponsors SLAM sports wear, Club Marine boat insurance, Ronstan for their support.

by Skip Lissiman

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Audi Etchells Worlds Day 1 - Tough day for Bandwagon

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