Worlds 2022 - AP/A and Control Center

The first racing day - Sunday May the 1st - showed perfect conditions, wind 15-17 knots with some gusts on top of it, and the usual Galveston bay chop, shaking boats like they would weight nothing. The foilers races showed the usual huge gap between the top-guns (Kuba, Manu, Bundy, Riley, Ravi) and the rest of the fleet. We might need to devise a new ranking system to avoid having 2/3 of the foiler fleet to come home with a collection of DNF.

On my side all went good with my well-prepared boat, until the part I didn't prepare broke in the 3rd leg of the 1st race, the cunningham. Not cool to have a big and deep sail and no way to de-power it upwind. After a quick fix, I could decently pass a bunch of boats downwind (few are trapeezing downwind, and those who try go to bath). On the second race I did better, although my cunningham was still at half-power. It shall now be fixed, touch wood !

Monday the wind forecast was confirmed immediately when looking at the boat park, some boats were shaking even when tightened to the ground. After diverse consultations, it was decided to have the "race another day" flags hoisted. So we went to the Houston Space Center watching rockets and other geeky stuff.

Cockpit of the Independence Space Shuttle.

The Control Center from which the lunar landings were operated.

A huge building with the 100% replica of the International Space Station.

Another huge building with a Saturn V rocket.

Racing for today starts now for the foiler, in 3 hours for the classics.

Watch this cool video by Nick Bowers from 1st day of racing:

Charles