Sean O’Brien reports from day three in Alacati…

A very slow start in Alacati today. The forecast wasn’t amazing and our location much further down the bay doesn’t seem to get the strongest of the gusts in comparison to the top of the bay in front of the marina where we have raced the past three years.

Teasing winds with plenty of sailors out on the course for about 3-4 hours finally played true and racing was resumed around 2pm with just enough strength to finish a couple more heats for the Ladies and attempt to start the semi-finals for the men.

3 ladies heats were abandoned in a row before finally heat 3 and 4 were completed. The men were up next but the heat 13 (semi-final) was abandoned by the 3rd gybe mark and sailors were sent back to the beach. The racing for the day was canned at 5pm despite there actually being enough wind to plane for most of the afternoon (with holes of 2 knots here and there) which allowed a lot of guys to tune up the 2014 prototypes that are appearing on the beach.

Turkey is a great place to test new equipment. Coupled with the UNLIMITED free excess baggage that event sponsor Pegasus airlines is offering then most of the sailors are bringing prototype sails and boards to dial in the last parts of the development cycle before everything needs to be registered for PWA use in 2014 and put in to production.

Josh Angulo has some new Magnums here. Albeau, Quentel and Dagan were testing a very radical looking Neilpryde Evo 6 prototype (that everyone was busting their nuts to take photos of!); North have their 2014 race sails prototypes here. Gaastra have (what looks to be a full production version) of their Vapor 2014 that Ross, Ben Van der Steen and Cedric Bordes have been flying around on. For the guys like me on Starboard, our 2014 iSonics are here in bags although we aren’t putting them on the water until after the contest and the cameras are away!

Not much else to report from here. The forecast is almost identical for tomorrow so we may have another teasing long day on the beach, baking masts and skin in the sun – could be worse!!