Today's Sailing News 

Olympic Sailing:  Finn Gold Cup Day 2

Finn Gold Cup
With the Olympics set for September 1996 medallists in the Finn class seem to be hunting for another medal. After 2 days and 3 races 1st place is held by the 1996 Olympic Gold Medallist MATEUSZ KUSZNIEREWICZ of Poland. 2nd is 1996 Silver Medallist SEBASTIEN GODEFROID of Beligum. 

Sailing on a day that combined a number of challenging elements such as: strong current, choppy waves, fog and a tide direction switch between races the past medallists were the boats of the day.
KUSZNIEREWICZ was 2nd and 3rd with Godefroid 1st and 2nd. The Polish sailor leads by 2 points. To 3rd is another 12 points.

For US Olympic trials winner Russ Silvestri it was not a stellar day. He was 28th and 21st. This gives him 61 points and 18th place after 3 races. Although not a top performance Silvestri is the top boat among nations not yet qualified for Sydney. 

So although not excelling within this regatta, Silvestri has his larger goal in hand through 3 races.

The Race class catamaran Club Med has passed the half way point of the Discovery Route from Cadiz Spain to San Salvador Bahamas. For the first 2020 miles Club Med's average speed was 17.41 knots.

Co-skipper Bruno Peyron reports than an inspection after Club Med had set the 24 hour distance record revealed: "The result is
excellent; everything would seem to be armour tight, nothing has moved. That¹s very reassuring for us."

Thus continues Club Med's success on her first ocean passage.

Groupama currently the Class I multi hull leader

For the Class I multi hulls the Europe 1 transat is entering an intense end game phase. The leading 60 foot trimarans are under 400 miles to finish. Approximately 24 hours and they'll be finished.
Currently leading is Franck Cammas on Groupama. Groupama had 372 miles to sail. Next is Eure Et Loir only 2 miles back. 3rd in Foncia 395 miles back. All are experiencing west of south winds around 20 knots. As there heading is about the same as the wind they are slugging upwind.

Within 24 hours one of these sailors will have out sailed and out willed the other and arrived 1st in Newport as the race winner and possibly the race record holder.

The Class I monohull fleet is lead by Ellen Macarthur on Kingfisher. Kingfisher is 1154 miles out. 2nd is Sill 39 miles back. Both boats have SE winds under 10 knots. 3rd is Whirlpool sailed by Catherine Chabaud. Whirlpool is a full degree of latitude south of Kingfisher and is sailing is 13 knots of east wind. This greater velocity could help Whirlpool close further.

From the Kingfisher Challenges website we can get a detailed look at how tough the race is. In conjunction with sleep expert Dr. Claudio Stampi Kingfisher is providing statistics, commentary and advise on Ellen's sleep patterns during the race.

Dr. Stampi recommends a sleep strategy of polyphasic naps. This is essentially means taking many short naps. A total of 4 to 5.5 hours per day is ideal.

Since the start of the transat Macarthur has slept as much as 5.15 hours and as little as 2.81 hours. The most naps in 1 day was 9, the fewest 4. The longest nap was 130 minutes or over 2 hours. The shortest 10 minutes. 

From shore Dr. Stampi has monitored Ellen's sleep via data transmitted from a sleep monitoring device she wears. For instance about Ellen's 130 minute nap Stampi Comments; " And then, on June 6th at about 18:30 (17:00 local, siesta time) she concedes herself a "luxury": two hours and ten minutes of sleep! Yes, this is a major luxury in these extreme circumstances, and this is the longest sleep she logged in the first 4 days into the race."

As the race has gone on, Ellen has slept less. After 3 days of under 4 hours sleep per day Stampi commented: "Although Ellen managed to get some sleep in the last 24 hrs and is now feeling much better, her sleep debt is still high, with an accumulated average of only 3.2 hrs sleep per day in the past 72 hrs. She must take advantage of any opportunity - and not many are being offered at the moment - to get some additional rest."

Through studying Macarthur's sleep habits during her delivery of Kingfisher, Stampi has identified Ellen's best 'sleep gates'. These are from 2100-0300 at nite, 0900 and 1200 during the day and 1600 in the afternoon. 

With a debt to sleep piled up Kingfisher's lead could hinge on Ellen's ability to use one of her sleep gates properly and rest up for the end game push to the finish.