Brits bounce back after night of repairs

Good day for Brits, better day for Thales Vinci...

Simon Shaw's British University Sailing Team sailed well after a night of boat repairs in yesterday's two inshore races based off Dieppe. Successfully achieving their goal of two top ten results the student team now move up to 12th in the overall standings.

However Thales Vinci, the leading boat in the student division, didn't let the British team distract them to finish with two top seven results placing them on top of the overall standings. Hyeres-Coych, relinquished their overnight lead after struggling in the second race of the day, finishing outside the top ten, dropping them down to fourth in the overall standings.

The first race saw the British team start well, rounding the first mark in the top three, however a bad spinnaker drop rounding the final mark saw the team drop down to ninth overall:

"We had a new crew working on the boat, and it was the first time we had dropped the kite in any wind", explains Shaw.

Race two saw the Brits pushing hard from the start. By the end of the first beat the team were in second place behind Antibes Juan-les-Pins. The student team maintained their excellent boat handling and speed through to the finish:

"We're pretty sure of our boat speed... If we can hold that speed in to the offshore races then we should improve on our overall position", commented Jeremy Elliot, bowman for the students.

The Kiwi boat, obviously missing Dean Barker and Hamish Pepper who left to compete in the Swedish Match Cup, had a second bad day dropping down to sixth in the standings. Team NZ, helmed by Cameron Appleton, had a poor mark rounding at the end of the first race losing nine places, leaving them outside of the top ten:

"We ending up gybing the wrong way and lost nine places", said team tactician Jeremy Lomas. "It was good conditions, it's our fault we got in to a couple of situations we shouldn't have", added Lomas.

It will be interesting to see how the British students fair in the 107 mile race to Cherbourg today as overnight racing is an unknown for the majority of the crew. With Team NZ lacking the invincible form they started with, and the top five overall slots now controlled by the french, sixth placed Team NZ and seventh placed Ville de Geneve Carrafour Preventionhave a lot of ground to make up in today's offshore.