At the third gybe I would imagine Benny was signing the sweet song of victory as he had a good lead and there was no sign of the wind faulting. Josh was pushing Julian up high away from the mark to give himself a nice bit of space to make the third mark with speed and he makes a good gybe but Julian is right there, not making a mistake and gains a small bit of ground on Josh while I stay as close as I can putting as much pressure on them as possible. It’s now the final leg out and away from the finish line. This is the one everyone really puts in a big effort to close down any gaps between them and their prey, always hoping for the slightly wide gybe, spin out or complete failure. I am watching the two guys in front of me and I know there could be one more shot at over taking someone. I decided 50m away from the mark that I was going to go in at full speed and try to come out below but with more speed hoping that Julian would push Josh into a mistake and at the same time fluff his own gybe. As it turned out, my gamble was correct. Benny made an easy gybe and is cruising to the finish, next is Josh, he makes an ok gybe under pressure from Julian comes out of the gybe nice and tight shutting the door on me and gaining on Josh. At this point however I have not slowed down at all and I am flying around the mark outside of Julian’s wake with eyes on nothing else but the finish line. Just as I can feel that I am neck and neck with Julian out of the gybe, I see Josh getting pulled around the front of his board!! Julian has to adjust his course ever so slightly to avoid Josh’s crash, but it’s still a full on fight to get to the finish. Looking back, I feel like my eyes went into tunnel version and there was no way I was going to let Julian beat me. Those last few metres felt like a life time to the finish, but I held on ferociously and thankfully to second. As I crossed the line, I felt my body relax and a mix of relief, excitement and adrenaline come over me, I was bloody chuffed! I looked at Julian and he looked at me, and there was a moment of respect between us; both happy with our result, but there was a long way to go. One of us would go on to win the event and the other would not. Congratulations to Julian who really sailed amazing and deserved the event win, next time though, I want to be first! JC
