Rolling the dice

Finally a win in the bag for Percy and Mitchell despite frustrating conditions at the Bacardi Cup

Star sailors are currently pulling their hair out at the Bacardi Cup in Miami, where some of the world's most competitive sailors are having to contend with perpetual light, fickle breeze and massive shifts.

"It's unbelievable," Iain Percy told thedailysail last night. "It has been 4-6 knots - all over the place. Pretty random stuff. Today it was a bit better conditions-wise - 4-12 knots - but not a lot to be honest. It is not going to be a particularly good week for sailing that is for sure."

Miami usually delivers Trade wind conditions, sea breeze conditions or northerlies. All this week a northerly has been fighting the sea breeze and looks to be set this way for the rest of the regatta. "One or other has been winning but only by a little bit," says Percy.

The result is that Paul Cayard and Phil Trinter, winners on the first day, have pulled out of the regatta to concentrate on the forthcoming US Trials, while Freddie Loof who was leading after day two pulled out of Tuesday's race, scoring a DNF, he was doing so badly.

Today Percy and crew Steve Mitchell finally got the better of the light winds to put in their first win of the series. "We kind of realised that the wind was going left so we were at the pin end and got on to port first and got to the shift first and then we led round every mark then," said the former World champion. "Normally you say the easiest races are when you are leading, but that wasn’t so much the case today because there was such big variation. You had to kind of ignore all the boats behind you and sail your own stuff every beat. You couldn’t really cover you just had to take your own shifts because they were so big. Our lead got bigger, got smaller got bigger, got smaller, but we always held on to it and in the end we had quite a comfortable gap."

Aside from their win they have scored an eighth place and 44th but got off on the wrong foot when they scored a BFD in the first race. "We were a bit silly," says Percy of that race. "We were a bit exposed. Peter Bromby came underneath us and we knew how close we were to the line and we were either going to be fouling him, or parking up and if you harden up in a Star you always shoot forward. We tried to come in too close to him and he managed to hook us and we were pretty vulnerable. We were doing alright, we were 10th or 15th at the windward mark, but again it was random. There was no way we were going to stay there."

Despite the conditions a handful of sailors have managed to keep some degree of consistency most notably Portugese sailors Afonso Domingos and Bernardo Santos.

"There’s only been four races and how many times can you throw a six in a row? Some people are sailing well. The Portugese guys are sailing out of their skin, so it is not all luck. You make good and bad decisions. We have made plenty of bad ones. Like any regatta you sail and make all the right decisions and sail smart you’ll be at the front. But there’s only one boat has managed four good races."

While an air of frustrating has set in on the race course, Percy acknowledges it is good and that's why they're there. "You always set out in a regatta to do well, but it was very quickly not going to be the case here. We’re going to try and try not to take the breaks too badly because it is probably going to be a bit up and down for the next two days. If we can work on speed and stay cool about it we could easily have two fiftieths or two top fives - we could have anything as could anyone out there if it is as it is."

Fortunately sailing in Miami in a 93 boat fleet is very different from pitching yourself against 14 other boats in Athens. "I’m sounding negative - it is a great fun event and it could be the best sailing conditions in the world here but it just hasn’t worked out this way. You always complain about the conditions when you are doing badly. We have made enough mistakes to deserve to be doing this badly."

We look forward to seeing how the dice roll for the remainder of the week.