Start
At the start of the race, the wind direction was quite on the left side. With the fleet wanting to go to the right shore, this meant that starting on port tack close to the pin might be a good idea to get both bias advantage and to go straight to the shore in the left shift. The start line bias was a huge 125m of advantage at the pin side.
Even though Tutta Forza and Obi-Wan had good starts at the pin, they were not able to tack and cross and ended up being too late to get to the right side. The wind on the left side coming from hard left as can be seen at Blue Label track. Mataran and Razjaren were giving up 29 and 58 meters to the leading Tutta Forza, but were heading in the right direction.
1st Upwind
All the gain was on the right shore and the race was all about getting there as quick as possible. Since the boats that started at the Race Committee had the initial disadvantage, the boats that ended up the best were Razjaren and Mataran. Any early tack to the left meant that you only get stuck in the permanent lift and end up losing more and more.
1st downwind
The course was very skewed due to the right wind direction and also because of the bend of the wind the only way to go was to gybe set and go all the way to the layline. Gybing a bit earlier to the gate was resulting in losing some meters to the boats that continued all the way to the layline. Boats in the back had also more wind and there was some compression of the fleet, still leaving the race open going into the 2nd upwind.
2nd Upwind
It was a one-way run to the right shore and then there finding good clear lanes while tacking back to the shore again. The lift boats get both approaching and leaving the shoreline was a huge advantage.
2nd Downwind
2nd downwind started the same way as the first one, with gybe setting to use the wind bend. However, while sailing toward the finish line, the wind was shifting even more left, and the boats that have gybed a bit before the layline ended up making it straight to the finish line.
