FOLLOWING THEIR THIRD PLACE IN RACE FIVE, FI BROWN SPOKE WITH NICK HALMOS AND HIS CREW FROM RHODE ISLAND USA

FB – Where are you all from?
Nick – I’m from Palm Beach, Florida but I live in Newport, Rhode Island.
Rob – The rest of us are all from Newport.

FB – So what made you decide to come and do the Melges 24 Europeans?
Nick – We acquired a boat last July and we’ve been sailing all winter and wanted to tune up for the Worlds. Also we’d heard that Lake Garda is the most beautiful place ever to sail so we came over.

FB – You must be very happy with your third place in the fifth race?
Rob 1 – Yeah! We took a little cruise to the other side of the lake while we waited and everything kind of clicked from then. Nick got a great start and we kind of got pin-balled out to the left.
Nick – In fact we had intended to go right.
Rob 1 – But our tactician did a good job calling lanes up the beat and when we rounded everybody gybed right away and he said no stay on starboard, and we stayed on starboard the whole way down.
Nick – That was actually the move.
Rob 1 – I think we made just two gybes, a short one to port and one in, and when we rounded he said “Hey Guys – We’re fourth”.
Rob 2 – I think we finally figured out the geography. We’ve studied it for three days now and it’s very clear that there are places you have to be and places you can’t be. Also we had like five or six starts today which gave us plenty of practise as starting has been our biggest problem here as the Europeans start a lot differently than the Americans.

FB – How do the starts differ?
Nick – The Americans tend to ramp up the speed coming into the start where as the Europeans by two minutes are all set up on the line, so if you’re not there at two minutes there’s no more room so it’s a little different.

FB – What was the biggest Melges 24 fleet you’d sailed in before this week?
Nick – Until now the biggest fleet was 60 boats at Key West.

FB – How did you get on there?
Nick – I think we did around 23rd?
Rob – No, it was 18th out of 60.

FB – Are you coming to the Worlds?
Nick – Yes definitely. Before that we’ll be doing the US East Coast Championship in Jacksonville and another one design regatta in Charleston in early fall. I’m still at school so I have to fit it all in round that!

FB – Well congratulations on today, good luck for the rest of the regatta and we look forward to seeing you in Ft Lauderdale.