Team USA goes from strength to strength, while GBR & IRL fire back with impressive performances on day two of championship racing

On the second day of championship racing our Irish and UK friends fired back with excellent sailing today.  It's so much fun to sail with them, and Scotland's hospitality deserves its legendary status.

With cool, rainy and shifty conditions waiting for them on course Team USA suited up and hit the water.  After a delay waiting for the course to be set, our sailors figured out the pin was WAY favored.  In fact in race 1 Nathaniel Johansson became tangled in the pin anchor line trying to take advantage and got off the line in dead last... yet turned on the jets (does he have one of those Alinghi engines stowed somewhere on that Opti?  Sorry, this BOR fan just couldn't resist!) to round the top mark 3rd and earn my grind back award of the day.  

There are interesting nuances to this regatta program that switched on sailors are using.  One is the seemingly always pin favored line which allows a well timed pin approach to yield a camera-clicking, crowd-goes wild port cross of the fleet.  The others offer even more advantages as we approach the gold/silver rounds... but we'll keep them as proprietary Team USA info for the time being :)

So what about results you say?  Well after four races and awaiting the scores for race 5 I'm happy to report all 6 American sailors in the top ten in Junior Fleet (with Adele Whitmyer leading Team USA notching 2 bullets and sitting 3rd overall) out of 145 boats!  The IRL sailors really stepped up today and currently sit 1-2.  We're in for a three nation dogfight in the final 3 days as standout GBR sailor Freddie Grogono rounds out the top ten in 4th place.

There's more good stuff after 5 races in Senior Fleet with Roger Dorr again on top of the heap in first ahead of hard charging GBR sailors Josh Voller and Murray Hampshire.  When Murray drops his 24 tomorrow we'll be in for quite a battle between these two.  While Team USA's Dorr leads the way, six of the top ten are GBR sailors with Spain and Ireland rounding out the top ten making this a truly international field.  Also, Team USA's Nathaniel Johansson has jumped up to 11th after dropping a DSQ, Megan Grapengeter-Rudnick and Ravi Parent are lurking in 12th and 13th ready to pounce and every American is in the top 33.  There can be no question Coach Bryan Paine has Team USA on track and charging hard.

After getting off the water quite late and lots of soaking wet gear to sort through it's time to sign off for now.  But stay tuned, because Team USA is just warming up and day three is just around the corner!