Dubai, here we come!

It's now official! Winning the selection event, we received the permission to represent Turkey at the Nations Cup! It was a great event. As it is usually the case, the best two teams made it through the round robin and semi finals to fight head to head at the final. It was us against Kemal Muslubas, the olympian at Athens '04 in Laser class. His team was made of some of the best Turkish sailors: Ertac Sunman, Fatih Ozmen, and Kerem Ozkan, while I had team alaturca on my side; Arda, Kaya, and Oguz. Unfortunately Kaya got sick after the round robin and we had to replace him with an upcoming young talent, Mert.

The first race, we won the pre-start and even managed to give them a penalty. But it seemed like it was still not enough to hold them behind. On the second beat they started a tacking duel and got closer and closer with every tack, when we decided to get seperated. We managed to round the mark in front but they were just on our tail on the last downwind. Using the gusts from behind they finally managed to get by us on the last 100meters of the leg but still had to complete their penalty. So, it was us who were first on the line.

The pre-start was ours again on the second race; we were ahead at the gun and they had a penalty. This is where we got over-confident: we didn't cover. They went left, found a nice gust and passed like 4 boat lengths ahead of us at the next crossing. The distance remained almost unchanged until the last downwind leg where they decided to take their turn right after the windward mark. We got close a little, and then the wind start to die off. We saw a gust on the left side of the course and gybed immediately towards it. Eventhough the gust never really came we still found more pressure then they had and got a little ahead but a little too much on windward. Then the wind died off completely and we started to drift towards the finish. We both gybed and now we were leeward of them and behind, while they had the finish 50 meters in front of them...Then a miracle happened. A gust came from out of nowhere, slightly from behind them and directly hitting us: We got pushed full speed towards the line and hit it close to the leeward end, just a boats length ahead of them!

That gave us the 2-0 lead which we needed to win the event. Now, we need to do the same in Dubai where the Group D regional finals will be held. It will be a tough event with more then 20 nations competing and we will need a podium finish to get Turkey to the Grand Final. It won't be easy, but I'm sure we'll have fun trying to achieve it...