Costa Brava race report PWA slalom

Steve Allen finished 3^rd at the PWA slalom event in Costa Brava.

I was able to get some good training in before this event where I was able to tune my gear very well to feel very fast and comfortable with my gear.

Round one,

1^st heat, the pin end of the start line seemed to be favored  with also making a shorter distance to the first mark. So I chose to start down there and pulled out a good lead to qualify easily.

2^nd heat, I went for the same start having a perfect start with Peter H-24 but this start was cancelled due to one guy being over early. On the next start I hesitated a little and then I was covered by other sailors all the way to the first mark. I then could not use my good speed to get out of there.

This put me in 7^th on the fist boy where I made a good inside jibe to come out in 5^thposition. I then managed to pass Jesper AUS-10 on the 2^nd reach to move into 4^thqualifying position. But I wanted to see if I could catch the guys ahead of me so I kept pushing hard, managing to pass Finian and Peter to finish qualifying this heat in 2nd.

In the semi final I chose to take the top of the start line to see if I could use my speed to make a good position on the first boy as my last pin end start was not very good. This worked well and I qualified easily to the final and gave me the confidence to make the same start again in the final.

The final. Everyone was pushing hard on the bottom half of the start line as it had been one of the best spots to start all day. But I was confident I could not be worse than 3^rd or 4^th on the first mark with my speed starting by the boat alone.

This worked out great as I could take my own line to the first mark . As I came down to the rest of the pack about 40m before the first boy I looked through my sail expecting to see 2 or 3 guys that I would have to jibe through. But I looked to the back of my sail to see Micah and Antoine who were starting to yell for boy room. So I sheeted on extra hard on a gust to push clear ahead of them so that I would be clear first on the first mark. This worked well but gave me a lot of speed in the jibe causing me to jibe a little wide but I still came out well with speed. I then made the biggest mistake which cost me the race. Which was for the first few seconds after exiting the jibe I sailed in the direct to the wrong mark further down wind. As the wind had also shifted a little I had to start to point really hard just to make the 2^nd jibe mark. Antoine then used this opportunity to sail down to me and push me down even more, before he eventually took all my wind making me almost stop in these light conditions allowing Ross to get passed also. I only just made the 2^nd mark, where I made a tight snap jibe not to let Micah get through on top of me. I then tried to fight back to catch Ross and Antoine  but after this mistake it was impossible leaving me in 3^rd position.

Round two, I was full of confidence and felt great from my speed in the first round. I chose just to make safe starts by the boat even though in other heats the pin end guys seemed to get to the first mark first. But at the same time with one mistake on the pin end you could be spat out the back quickly also.

The boat end sart paid off well for me with my speed and won my first heat by far.

2^ndheat, Josh Angulo covered me by the boat having a better start than me, putting me a little back on the first mark. But then after making a nice first jibe I came out in 2^nd place to qualify through to the semi final.

Semi final as I felt a little over powered on my 10m in the heat before I switched down to my 8.6m sail, just to have the wind drop making me a little nervous.

However I was pleasantly surprised with my speed down the first reach where I rolled the whole fleet and caught Finian who later told me he had the best start of the contest on the pin end. I managed to make a good jibe inside Finian to accelerate much quicker than him, passing him immediately to pull out a big lead to win this semi final.

Ross was in the same semi final and did not qualify giving me a great chance to move up in the rankings.

However unfortunately during the second semi final the wind dropped cancelling this race. The wind was never to come back which then made our semi final not count giving everyone in the last 16 of the 2^nd round of slalom the same points.

So beating Ross in the second round now did not count, leaving me in a still very good 3^rd position for this event with Antoine taking the win and Ross keeping his 2^nd position.