Ireland’s Eve McMahon retained her overall leader’s yellow bib on the Bay of Palma as Gold fleet racing for the women’s one-person dinghy intensified, passing the halfway point of the Princess Sofia Trophy.
Chilly northerly winds swept down from Mallorca’s snow-capped Tramuntana mountains as forecast, gusting as promised to over 25 knots, conditions in which McMahon is a proven master.
But perhaps for the day that was in it, the weather pranked the 800+ combined fleets of this first Sailing Grand Slam regatta of the season and quickly faded away.
In what was to become the sole race of another long day at sea, McMahon built her standings to pull into fourth place with every prospect of pulling in more places on the second last stage of the 40-minute race.
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But an umpire call under Rule 42 against the Howth sailor for a ‘rocking’ body kinetic motion saw her exonerate herself by taking a penalty turn.
That saw her lose two places on the course but, more critically she must avoid incurring a similar infraction later in the series as a second incident would result in disqualification maximum score.
Rule 42 infringements are quite common and so far in this event there have been 17 such penalties in the ILCA 6 class alone.
“The yellow flag was really quite marginal, it was really on the edge,” said Vasilij Zbogar, McMahon’s coach and double Olympic medallist. “We are staying focused and trying to push every race, things are going well and even in difficult races Eve can pull out good results.”
However, the world-number-seven ranked sailor is determined move beyond the penalty for the remaining two days of fleet racing, now known as the elimination stage, to determine Saturday’s top 10 finalists.
“It was a race of snakes and ladders and I was doing really well,” McMahon said after coming ashore. “A lot of sailors are picking up penalties and I’m pretty used to it so I’m just going to race as I usually race.
“My racing is completely clean and we’ve trained it over the winter to keep it clean so it was a harsh penalty but I just have to deal with it.”
Meanwhile, Ewan McMahon had his own ladder to drop down after his second race of the day saw him lead the men’s Gold fleet to top mark only to have the race abandoned when the breeze died.
“It was a bit of frustration but that’s the way sailing goes and you just have to roll with the punches and Palma is delivering quite a few of those,” said McMahon. “I definitely know I have the speed and I just need to make sure I get good starts.”
Across the bay, close to the shoreline at Arenal, the skiff classes also only managed a single race for the day which was insufficient to allow any of the Irish crews to catch-up and reach Gold fleet for their events.
