Coverage of Olympic sailing on TV may or may not be satisfactory. No worries, though you can follow it nearly in real time via the Internet. You can get not only race by race placings, but mark by mark placings with the time between each boat. There is even a wind strength and direction provided for each mark. All this at www.sailing.org.

Here then are notes from the racing on Wednesday. In general the first race for most classes was sailed in light 5-7 knot conditions. The second races saw breezes in the low double digits, more consistent in direction.

In the Europe race 5 USA’s Meg Gallaird was 3rd and moved up to 5th overall.

Gallaird fell back to 14th in the day’s 2nd race, 6th for the series. Notably pre regatta favorite Siren Sundby of Norway has been knocked from 1st by Australia’s Sarah Blanck.

The Laser class also saw a strong US performance. Mark Mendenblatt was 6th which moved him up to 3rd. The days 2nd race was not quite as good as Mark was 10th and fell back to 5th sailing in winds that were in the low double digits.

The Finns resumed racing with Australia nipping leader Ben Ainslie of Great Britain by 2 seconds. Perhaps more importantly 2nd place Spain was scored OCS.

Finn race 8 saw Pole Matuesz Kusznierewicz take 1st. Ben Ainslie took 3rd place just ahead of the Spanish boat. Ainslie now leads the Spaniard Rafael Trujillo by 8 points.

Ainslie’s comeback from a 1st day results of 9th/DSQ continue to make him- the man- full stop of the sailing games.

In men’s 470 Great Britain finished 2nd, 15 seconds ahead of the USA. This put the Brits 2 points ahead overall. In the 2nd race Great Britain’s margin was greater in time and in places and they now lead the veteran US team by 6 points.

The women’s 470 saw leader Greece 14th in the 1st race and the USA 18th. The Greek team came right back winning the days 2nd race and now has 21 points exactly 1/2 of 2nd place! Unfortunately for the US they racked up a 2nd 18th.

The 49er skiffs sailed 3 races. The USA’s Wadlow and Spaulding has good finishes in the first 2 races, but ended the day with an OCS.

The USA’s Yngling team made up ground by winning race 7.

Race 8 saw them on the elevator shaft and they ended up in 15th out of the 16 boat fleet. They are now in 12th place after 8 races.

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