All And All, It's Still Just A Regatta

You can bring 5000 athletes to a shared location. You can give them lots of team gear. You can put 50 of them in a bus speaking lots of different languages...but you still need some wind. Here's what the USOC said about yesterday:

First Day of Sailing Cancelled at Pan American Games

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (July 22, 2007) - After still winds delayed starts Sunday, the initial two races of all nine sailing classes were cancelled on the first day of competition at the XV Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The opening race of the Games will now be held tomorrow, Monday, July 23, beginning at 1 p.m. local at Glória Marina, and the sailors will look to complete three races before the end of the day.


So we're going to go back at it tomorrow morning and hope for breeze. We get detailed weather every day from Jennifer Lilly back in the states. She's been spot on. There's a low off shore to the south of us. There's a high right over us. It is really dry and hot here, so the fight between the sea breeze and the land breeze was on today. Neither won. We thought for awhile the land breeze would work and on the other course they even started a race with the Sunfish, but they didn't make their first leg time limit. The race time target is 75 minutes for each race and the boats need to sail the first leg in 20 minutes or they cancel the race and send everyone back to the starting line. The sunfish missed their first leg limit by about 3 minutes. We went out at 11 am and sailed around until they finally cancelled racing at 4. We moved all day. I bet the racing was about 4 knots. We would probably have started a fleet race at home in that much, but we think they did the right thing by not starting us today. You want a good test at the start of the regatta.

Truth told, we're going to struggle for breeze lots of the week and they may have us sailing in 4 by the end of the week, but not today.

The Most Fun Thing That Happend Today, Brought To You Today By Jenna and Noah:

Well, there wasn't much wind at the sailing site. But wind is strange, just 4 miles away the water ski event was shelved by...too much wind. And when we got back to the village last night, there was lots of wind. The land breeze wasn't fightning the sea breeze and it was blowing about 10. Since it was very dry and hot, it was an excellent breeze for drying clothes. So I rigged up my clothes line and did my stuff. It all dried in about 25 minutes. They have laundry service here, but the stuff comes back wet and you need to dry it anyway, so I think I'll just continue to do my own. Jody brought Woolite. So in a day where I've got a cold and went to sleep at 8:30 and missed the USA-Cuba woman's basketball game, drying clothes will have to suffice as the most fun thing that happened today!