Wait and see

Another long morning of waiting for breeze around the Marina Grande in Capri with the flags scarcely lifting some of the time. The delay has meant plenty time to pick over the good and bad of yesterday’s two races. There is a measure of confidence that racing will get under way later today but once more staying cool and poised in the warm sunshine is key just now.

Steve Hayles, navigator on Rán Racing, considers the day’s weather outlook and explains the practical value of having their mothership in the harbour alongside the race fleet:

We have two or three different forecasts this morning but the gut feeling is that eventually we should end up with a sea-breeze, but it will take a long time to get there. There is a little more gradient and so the big picture has changed a little, but I think we are looking at somewhere between 9 and eleven knots but I think it will be a little bit of a one-sided race track again.

We are very lucky here that there is good race management and so they don’t keep us guessing. Often in this waiting situation you might have no idea what the race officers are thinking, but we are kept well informed, there is good communication which helps. And we have good facilities locally. We have very fortunate to have Niklas’ yacht here, some of us stay on the boat, and we have all the briefing and de-briefing facilities on board and that can make us extremely productive in these times, and so instead of sitting around in coffee shops and the like we can actually sit down and work out what we did badly yesterday.
Steve Hayles, navigator, Rán Racing