Red and White and Boats All Over

Day two at the 2012 Olympic Games brings more of the Canadian fleet out on the water. Joining the Star and the Finn fleet in their second day was also the Radial, Laser and 49er’s. First to start were the Lasers in about 13 knots of breeze, and partly cloudy skies. David Wright sailed a vicious pair of races landing an 18^th place finish in his first race and 15^th in his second. Up next was the radial fleet – Danielle Dube of Glen Haven, Nova Scotia sailed her first race in a tough crowd of very experienced radials. Finishing 22^nd in her first race and making an improvement to 21^st in her second she sits at 23^rd overall.

At 1pm the 49ers were on the gun, starting very well and sailing a close battle the entire race. Hunter Lowden and Gordon Cook sailed an extremely close race against Denmark and France, shuffling between first second and third the entire race. In the end the guys were shut out and finished 3^rd a mere 2 seconds behind the lead boat. It was unreal, close racing! Gordon Cook - “We had a good start on the first race and battled it out in front the whole way. We ended up 3^rd and we’re happy with our performance”. In the next race the guys were a little farther back in the fleet, shuffling around the course as the 15^th and 16^th boat, and finishing in 16^th. Overall they’re sitting at 9^th.

In his second day of racing, Greg Douglas was next to sail for Canada in the Finn class. Another hungry pack of Finn sailors raced neck and neck, taking lots of wipe-outs and pushing Douglas to the middle of the group to leave him finishing 16^th in the first race. In his second race he fought closely with the Polish and Australian contenders and moved ahead to take 13^th. He currently sits at 17^th overall, as he puts it, “bad starts today but battled hard and made some ground up.”

The Star sailors Richard Clarke and Tyler Bjorn took 6^th place in the first race of day two. “Better day. We had some minor equipment problems that threw us out of phase a bit today but we are going to crawl our way out one race at a time." The guys battled another tough day, with mere seconds separating them from number 1. In their second race in 17-19 knots of breeze the guys placed 8^th to move them to 12^th overall.

Keep following the Canadian Sailing Team on Facebook for the latest updates from on the scene, and on canadiansailingteam.ca for our insights into the day. Also checkout ISAF’s Olympic sailing site for the best coverage. Sail fast Canada!