Day 1 - Arrival at Competition and Technical Inspections

Hey everyone,

Today we started the first day of the competition! We were the second team at the lake (right after the team from the Southhampton, UK!) and quickly got set up in our tent with Hydra, now nice and shiny silver.

After setup, we got our three skippers weighed in and ballasted up to the 70kg (154lbs). Riddhi netted a total of 4 ballast bags, and once again sent out the organizing staff to buy more ballast for the other teams.

For the competition our skippers will be Mike Barako, Riddhi Roy, and Robbie Wedler (below).

We even had some time between inspections to take a few trips around the area and explore the lake.

Lastly, we ended the night with an excellent dinner hosted at the University of Arkansas. After the feast, Jeff Morehouse presented the awards for best Technical Report. 1st place this year went to Elizabethtown College. We tied with University of Arkansas for 2nd/3rd place, with the difference in the judges scores only differing by 1/10th of a point. We each received 85 out of 90 possible points, with us receiving the 3rd place trophy.

Everyone did a great job this year on the technical report, and I could not be more proud of all of our team members that put so much time and effort into doing the best we could on this competitive portion of the competition.

So at the end of Day 1 we are in pretty good shape, with 1 trophy behind us already. We have 85 out of 90 possible points, and are tied with University of Arkansas for 2nd place. Tomorrow we will hopefully see the results of Qualifiers (100 total points) as well as Slalom (also 100 total points) and will be well on our way in the competition.

I am excited to see how Hydra and the rest of the crew will pull through tomorrow. Keep checking back for more updates as we post the results tomorrow night (no internet at the lake, i'm afraid)!

- Mark