2024 Star World Championship, fickle wind hard to read for the 64 boat fleet

Four start attempts for Race Two at the 2024 Star World Championship in San Diego, California, were a frustrating beginning of a day that the the fleet will remember as a very difficult one, during the two laps of the windward/leeward course they had to keep their cool while the weather was playing tricks on them.

The wind off the coast of Silver Strand, just south of San Diego, was fickle and shifty. A good 10-12 knots breeze welcomed the fleet on the racecourse at around 1230, but right after the third start sequence, approximately an hour later after two general recalls, it died 2 minuted in the race, leaving half of the fleet just floating on the left side of the line. That same side was then the favored one in the fourth and actual start of Race Two, and that is where local skipper Will Stout with crew Danny Cayard took off from. A good first beat playing the shifts and they were comfortably leading at the top mark, followed by local legend Eric Doyle with Payson Infelise, and by the gate, their margin had at least doubled, and so on until the finish, which they crossed several minutes before Doyle / Infelise.

“We got off on the left side of the line and just had a little bit more pressure than everybody else, then we took it to the right side and then it was just about tacking left and right to stay in the pressure”, said Will Stout. “The pressure was up and down and left and right all day today, and we really tried to keep our heads out of the boat, talking constantly with each other, it seemed to continuedly pay for us, and we were looking at our competitors, there's no slouches out there, so we tried and use what they were doing to our advantage, and we were able to put one together today”, added Danny Cayard.

Stout / Cayard are second overall thanks to two very good days, while Doyle / Infelise are the provisional leaders of the 2024 Star World Championship, even though, like everyone cares to underline, the road is still long and the trophy far away.

“Very trying conditions especially for the Race Committee today, they did a fantastic job, the wind was shifting around, it was quite up and down, at a lot of different wind directions from the either the pin end or the weather end”, commented Eric Doyle. “It was very challenging, we had several recalls and a race abandoned because the wind died in our face, so basically it went from zero to 12 knots at times, it was very tough sailing, you had to hook the puffs together, play the left but watch out for big right shifts and work hard downwind. Kudos to Will and Danny, they had a big race and won, but after two days we're happy of our performance, we're chipping away and things are going well”.

For a handful of very happy teams, like Augie Diaz (USA) and Bruno Prada (BRA) who went from a 16th to a 4th, there were many struggling on the racecourse. Huge distances separating them, everyone looking for that puff that just wasn’t coming, like Olympian Jon Dane III and Peter Sangmeister (USA), 9th yesterday and 35th today, or even worse, Continental Champion Tomas Hornos (USA) and Mauricio Bueno (BRA), 10th in Race One and 56th in Race Two.

Nonetheless, no angry faces were spotted at the after-sail refreshment at the San Diego Yacht Club, the Championship is not even halfway through and after four races the throw out comes in.