Start
Nefeli was 16m of upwind distance above Melgina at the start and went down to 60m behind after going back. This lead was cut a lot after two tacks of Melgina and very bad sailing angle after the 2nd tack.
1st upwind
Melgina took the left shift to cross but slowly got headed without reaction. Its initial course after the tack was 304 and went all the way to 328. Getting headed by 24 degrees and not reacting is usually not the best practice. Nefeli was at that point even jumping ahead.
Tacking on the right shift late still brought Melgina a few boat lengths in front.
The crucial mistake was made when with such a right wind direction Melgina went to the left layline. With wind at 280 degrees and pre race and in race shifts were between 265 and 275, going hard to left layline can lead to disaster by overstanding the mark if the wind shifts back left.
So Nefeli almost made the mark from the cross behind. Filtering out the starboard sailing only, we can see that Melgina has sailed 406m after crossing, while Nefeli only needed 93m to get to the mark.
1st downwind
On the downwind Nefeli gained by going to the layline and doing 3 gybes less. Biggest gain coming on the hot approach to the mark, while Melgina had to gybe 2 more times.
LW gate
Nefeli then made a mistake of rounding the gate that was 19m below. This was cutting the distance between th4e boats from 40m to almost zero as soon as Melgina has rounded the mark. The rule should always be if there is enough bias that you can clearly see it, you should have a very strong reason not to go to the more windward mark.
2nd upwind
2nd upwind, from half way up, Nefely took the first left and has played the shifts more and gained a lot. Melgina didn’t take the first one and ended up lifted towards the left with no chance to use any of the shifts.
2nd downwind
Melgina was always faster and was gaining meters. There were probably some fresh gusts pushing them down towards Nefeli.
