This morning the world's fastest sailors were greeted with Catalunya's more gentle side, providing them with an opportunity to rest any niggling injuries and take a step back to form new strategies for the races ahead.

As the morning progressed and the skies cleared the sailors tuned their equipment whilst keeping one eye on the switching wind. The onshore breeze took a turn for the better as midday approached allowing four heats of elimination 8 to be completed. With winds blowing between 8-12 knots on the inside marks the sailors took to the water on their biggest equipment.

Four heats took place seeing Josh Angulo (Angulo / Gun / DaKine), Micah Buzianis (JP / NeilPryde), Ben Van Der Steen (Starboard / Loft / Mystic) and Julien Quentel (RRD / NeilPryde) claim the number one spots and sail through to round two.

Controversy raised its ugly head in the final heat of the day. Cyril Moussilmani (Starboard / North Sails) was in an unfortunate position at the start and failed to plane off the line, whilst the rest of the pack caught a lucky gust and pulled away leaving him in 6 place and unable to advance further in this elimination. His protests that the wind was not strong enough fell on deaf ears as the race committee had been carefully monitoring the wind to ensure it was above the minimum threshold of 7 knots. Moussilmani will have to keep his fingers crossed this elimination won't count in order to maintain his podium position.

Following this heat Maciek Rutkowski's (Tabou / Gaastra) premature start resulted is his demise from this round. Competition remained on standby for the remainder of the day as it switched back to the morning's onshore direction, insufficient for racing.

The PWA took the moments of down time to put a few questions to the sailors.

Peter Volwater (Fanatic / MauiSails)

How is the racing going for you?

"I went pretty well, I started off in 3^rd in the first day but I have slipped down to 6^th. I would have liked to have done a couple more races so that I could have a couple more discards, but the wind is looking a bit light now. It was really fun to do some high wind racing again, and that is definitely what we got. I was prepared with my 5.5 and 58 liter wide board. I sailed some high wind before this event and got a little bit of an injury on my shin and could hardly walk yesterday morning. I took some ibuprofen and I was happy to hang-in where I was but having a rest day today is good timing for me."

Arnon Dagan (Tabou / Gaastra)

How do you deal with the strong winds?

"It is kind of hard, even though we are training all year round, you don't get that many days of wind like that. It is a surprise, you have to rely on your knowledge and you go into your survival settings, longer harness lines and bigger footstraps at the front and a much more controllable fin. Once you get into the groove it is ok"