Folks,
Today was the invitation race .
It started in a light breese of around 6 knots from the south with an incoming tide.
The incoming tide creates a current of around 2 knots going south the north parrallel to the beach.

So with the first leg working into the current many of the fleet choose to work the
up the beach in shallower water. This in itself was still a bit of a lottery as the
breese was patchy with some stronger corridors further away from the beack.
The first rounding of the windward mark had Hans KloK in the lead with Mark Presdee in second followed by Martine Kooyman & Frans Von Marle, Wouter, Matt Mcdonald and
Marcus Towell.

By the time the boats converged on the gate at the bottom of the downwind
Matt Macdonald had moved up into 3rd followed by Martine & Frans and Marcus.

By the second windward mark rounding Hans had established a huge lead. Was was over a
hundred metres past the clearance mark before the next boat even got to the windward mark.
So hans was being followed some way back by Martine & Frans and then Matt. Matt pulled his spinnaker
early and carried it for the reach across to the clearance mark and while Martine and Frans
pulled their kite Matt pulling his kite first paid with him sqeezing past Martine & Frans
and then openning a lead of around 30 or 40 meteres.

So Matt had managed to climb into second place for the spinnaker run to the bottom mark but
Hans had a very handy lead. Matt had a blinder of a downwind rounding the bottom mark ahead of Hans.

The breese was building and the third rounding of the windward mark had Matt then Hans then Martine.

As the breese built it got uo to 13 knors.

Bt the end of the fourth work we had Hans back in the lead followed by Martine and Frans then Marcus.

Now we have the final downwind run for the finish and Martine with Frans were pulling out all stops and
burried the bows up to the front beam several times under spinnaker and still recvering. I've attached a pic.
With the breese having shifted towards the east it was becoming increasingly dificult to cary
the kite and while everyone tried, sooner or later it had to be put away with some very quick
reaches to the line.

From what I could make out the finish order was Hans, Martine with Frans on the pointy end, then Marcus.


Every one seems to be happy , friendly and having a really fun time. No doubt the stress levels will rise and the real commpetition begins.
So far I've taken around 240 pics over 2 days. Some of these have been uploaded onto the F16 web site.

2007 F16 Global Challenge