Melges 24 Croatia Cup Trogir Race 2

06.05.2023.

Start

The start line was still pretty favored at the pin-end side. This even allowed the boats starting at the pin to tack and cross the fleet. All the boats that tacked and crossed (Razjaren, Point One, and Yikes) ended up leading the fleet after the start, even though they did not win the pin-end side. The pin end was won by two other boats, not logged. (Makako and Obi-Wan). Due to line bias, not one tracked boat has crossed the line within 5 seconds of the start signal.

1st Upwind

After the start, once again top boats could hold their lanes easier and stay high. This is the key point in being able to get to the favored left side. So Panjic and Mataran got back the initial loss of being behind the leaders at the start.

Tracks of 4 boats going to the left side. At the polar graph, Point One (Red) is the only one going above the 6 kts of speed, but with lower VMG, as can be seen by red dots being lower on the screen than green, brown and purple ones. So the loss of the red line is also shown on the DTL graph. Mataran was gaining all the time and Panjic lost suddenly at the end of starboard tack. Probably due to more unstable wind that was sometimes in the left corner.

The wind was again having quite more left direction at the left side of the course than at the start. So the left side was paying again. There was a big permanent left bend on the way to the top mark, allowing Razjaren to arrive at the mark from what was initially quite below the left layline. Other boats in the higher lane still got good pressure to get to the mark quickly. The track towards the mark clearly shows a much higher angle that Razjaren could sail.

1st Downwind

Due to the now pretty skewed course, there was only one way to go and that was to use the left wind all the way down to the layline. At the very end of the downwind there was a little to play, but overall was not giving many options for gains. Boats in the back had better conditions and more breeze, so She was the boat that has done the quickest downwind of the fleet and gained significantly to the leaders.

2nd upwind

2nd upwind was similar with the wind behavior. Going a bit to the right was not bad choice, but at the end you had to go to left as soon as possible. There was another huge lift on the way to the mark, this time allowing Panjic to gain a lot and almost overtake Mataran. Most boats ended up over the left layline where sometimes also the wind was more up/down.

Big lift for Panjic and Joyrunner, pushing the rest of the fleet over the layline.

2nd downwind

With the big left shift, the course became so skewed that there was only one way to go. Except Panjic overtaking Mataran by bluffing after the hoist, not much could happen.