DAY 5 ON THE RACE COURSE WITH ERIC WULFF
On Wednesday December 14th, the International Melges Class Association hosted a press conference featuring 8 former Melges 24 World Champions including Vince Brun, Flavio Favini, Harry Melges III, Jeff Ecklund, Shark Kahn, and Philippe Ligot. All eight former world champions are racing in this year’s event and they all agreed that this was a very deep fleet of talented sailors. Vince Brun who is the only two time world champion in the Melges fleet stated that “at each Melges world championship there is always one team that seems to have things figured out more than the rest and they just have that extra speed and knowledge of what is going on tactically”. In this years world championship there are two skippers that have emerged who seem to have that extra edge, and they are James Spithill and Dave Ullman.
In Thursday’s first race (race 9 overall) the winds were around 16-18 knots with 1-3’ waves. The course that posted was the long course with 7 legs. The fleet once again pushed the line and we had a general recall. On the subsequent restart things got a bit dicey for a couple of boats as things got tight on the line. One unfortunate casualty today was John O’Driscoll on GBR 554 “Black Seal” who had his boat holed at the start. After the chaos on the starting line sorted itself out, the boats that worked the right side of the course got a bit of a lift about half way up the beat and closed the door on a few of the regatta leaders that were looking to play the middle to left side of the course. One of those that got caught was Gabreile Benussi who was near Dave Ullman and James Spithill at the top of the beat but couldn’t get quite in front of a large pack of starboard tackers on the starboard layline and rounded in the low 20s around the first mark. Ullman and Spithill had just enough room to get past the wall of starboard tackers and rounded 1st and 2nd respectively. From there Dave Ullman and his team walked away from the fleet. At the finish, Ullman had over a 90 second lead on Spithill and a two and a half minute lead on the third place finisher John Bertrand. Francois Brenac wound up forth and Flavio Favini finished up in 5th in race 9.
Race 10 started after a bit of a delay as a rain squall was hanging over the fleet. The Race Committee having had 9 good races so far decided to postpone for about an hour until the squall passed. At the start of the 5 leg race, the wind direction was around 155 degrees and winds were in the 12-15 knot range with a little bit less chop on the water. The fleet once again got tagged with a general recall and had to start over again. On the restart the majority of the fleet split up the first beat. Early on the right looked favored but a lefty came in at the top of the first beat and Flavio Favini rounded the windward mark first followed by Morgan Reeser, Gabrio Zandona on Joe Fly, Dave Ullman, and James Spithill. At the leeward mark the standings hadn’t changed much, but on the second beat to windward Ullman and Spithill had that extra gear that Vince Brun alluded to in the press conference and Ullman Rounded first followed by Spithill. On the rounding Spithill almost faced disaster as his spinnaker disintegrated after the set leaving only the luff and leach tapes flying in the wind. This was fortunate for them as they were able to retrieve the masthead halyard by pulling on the tapes that were left flogging in the wind and launch their backup spinnaker in relatively short order allowing only 4 boats to pass them. Ullman on the other hand just continued to sail flawlessly and wound up with his second bullet of the day. Rounding out the top 5 for Race 10 was John Bertrand in second, Brian Porter in third, Gabrio Zandona in fourth, and Francois Brenac in fifth.
The final 2 races tomorrow will decide who will walk away with the 2005 Corum Melges World Championship.