Heading off tomorrow to Dubai with an early start at 7 am. Last year some of the most iconic photos came from a dawn start out of Abu Dhabi. The forecast is for light, upwind reaching, with some upwind work. The models are a bit mixed about how far to go offshore, but there are fishing nets and waypoints to handle so that will be determinative. Last year we had to navigate through the fishing nets at night, and it was a very difficult! Ugh. It is a shelf and miles of fishing nets… Allegedly, if you flatten the boat it will eventually “pop” up over the nets and get through, but while racing there last year felt like running aground and in one case we definitely didn’t get off, and had to have the local fisherman help us. Cutting nets away is a crime so this is serious business.
Today was inport racing. Light and weird helicopter puffs off the skyscrapers made it difficult. We had good starts, but sometimes didn’t take the immediate risk to grab a temporary puff. In the end we did alright, but not great. The Omani women had fun, and today’s big lesson was learning about the importance of weight movement on the boats. I wish we had had more time to train before dropping them into racing, because it is hard to learn while in the middle of a race. Explanations get shorter, time and opportunity for trial and error get small, and focus on more specifics limits the big picture learning.
Tonight, two of the women missed the briefing (that we always have) for the next leg. I was pretty displeased, as our briefings are a basic requirement. It was puzzling and uncharacteristic of these two women. They tracked me down in my room late tonight to say how sorry they were. They had gone out, and ran into bad traffic (happens here), and couldn’t get back. They felt so bad; they weren’t going to be able to sleep without speaking to me. I appreciated that – we all muck up – and I have felt bad like that too. With a stern warning, we are good to go tomorrow. If that’s the worst of it, I think we can deal!
Today we were on the podium to receive our prize for 3rd place overall in the race. With many legs to go, its anyone’s game. It was absolutely fantastic to be able to have our team on the podium, and let the Omani women feel their rightful place to be in the mix with the best. Everyone deserves to know that feeling, although not without some sacrifice and hard work.
Click to track the race from the Sailing Arabia The Tour website!
