Wild Youth

Action at the Toyota
Match Race in Poland from Jürg
Kaufmann. Here is today’s report from Team Mirsky.

Today we saw all kinds of weather with heavy rain fronts moving through,
leaving behind blue skies and light winds for the afternoon’s
racing. With half of the teams finishing the Round Robin today, we are
looking comfortable to get into the second stage, despite still having
3 races tomorrow morning. However, the big surprise has come from fellow
Perth youth team, Black Swan Racing, skippered by Keith Swinton who
has finished the Round Robin on 9 wins and only 2 losses, putting him
in first place – an impressive feat considering this is his first
Grade 1 event. Following him is the other young Australasian team of
Blackmatch Racing out of New Zealand who are sitting on 8 wins and 3
losses.

We started the day racing the Polish team who qualified for this event
just last week. We were put on the back foot from the beginning and
had to follow them around the track for the first lap after losing the
prestart. At the bottom mark however, he let us split to the favoured
right hand side, and we got to the top mark with a comfortable lead
that we maintained to the finish.

Next up we had Adam Minoprio and his Blackmatch Racing team. By this
time the winds were gusting up to 30knots, making the boathandling vital
during the prestart. We weren’t quick enough to realize this,
and suffered considerably, getting a double penalty just off the start
line. Minoprio covered us tightly all the way around, and wouldn’t
let us pass, so we had to concede to adding one more loss to the tally.
After a long pause for damage from the squall, we raced Marek Stanczyk
in light, shifty conditions. We won the start convincingly and started
to get into our groove a lot more than the previous two races. We managed
to lead around the whole race track, ending our day on a positive note
with 2 wins and 1 loss.