Mixed winds caused headaches for sailors later in the afternoon – with delays affecting the Laser, 49er and Finn classes. But it wasn’t enough to put off medal-hope Matt Wearn, who finished a busy three-race day in 2nd position overall.

“It was good to get a bit of momentum and to feel like I’m starting to race like I know I can,” Wearn said. “I came in feeling a bit frustrated with my previous races, so it was good to get that monkey off my back.”

Shifting winds forced his third race to be abandoned and restarted, but the Perth sailor wasn’t bothered by the interruption.

“It was difficult out there, but to walk away in second is good. It’s confidence-building.”

The Laser men have a day off tomorrow, and will return to the water on Thursday. 

In the Finn class, Jake Lilley was also lapping up the tough conditions.

“It was fun, a nice way to open my campaign with some tricky racing,” he said. “It was a day of two halves really. We had some wind blowing off the land for the first race then it sort of died and did almost a 180 around and came off the sea in a direction that we haven’t seen in five years, so that’s how you want to kick it off - with a bit of drama!”

Lilley claimed 10th in his first race and 8th in his second, ending the day sitting in 8th position overall.

“There are a few things I need to tidy up, but I’m really happy with how I got out of the blocks,” he said. “It’s really easy to throw it away on the day and if you look at past Olympics and whatever that’s where you can lose the regatta.”  

His final race was postponed as difficult weather conditions caused chaos and Lilley said he was relieved when he was finally able to complete the second event.

“You don’t want to be missing races off the top,” he said. “You want to get in there and get started. I did that and I feel really relaxed, really calm.” 

It was not such a productive day for brothers Will and Sam Phillips – their 49er fleet had little luck with shifting winds. The fleet was postponed from the outset, and they only manged to fit in one of the three scheduled races.

“In one word, the day was long,” Will laughed. “It started off with a northerly gradient wind and then it went to zero – died out to nothing after a big raincloud came across.”

After a lengthy delay, racing was resumed. But not for long.

“We finally got racing but about halfway through the second lap it was abandoned because of shifty winds.”

They were eventually gifted the chance to get one race on the board, with the brothers achieving a placing of 8th.

In the 49erFX class, Tess Lloyd and Jaime Ryan achieved their goal of a “clean” day of sailing.

“I think we’re just really glad we had no big drops today –our main goal was to have a consistent day and we did that.”

The team finished, 9th, 11th and 7th consecutively, in what was a solid showing for the relatively new duo.

“We’re not going out trying to win races,” Rio Olympian Ryan said. “We’re trying to sail clean and keep the numbers low. This is a long regatta and our strategy is to chip away consistently and see where that puts us on the scoreboard at the end of the week.” 

“It was really, really shifty winds,” Lloyd added. “We haven’t been training in these sorts of conditions at all over the last two weeks since we’ve been here, so to go out and put down those low numbers on our first three races is good.”

The debut Olympian said she was prepared for the unexpected – and her first outing certainly delivered on that.

“It was raining this morning and we haven’t seen rain in I don’t know how long so it was different, but it was a really good racecourse with lots of opportunities.” 

Also making the most of her opportunities, was Mara Stransky in the Laser Radial class.

She turned a rough start into a challenge, after receiving an infringement at the start line.

“The first race didn’t start too ideally – I got a penalty so I had to do a turn and was a very, very long way behind everybody to begin with. But I thought it was a good chance to work on my mental toughness and see how many boats I could catch back again,” Stransky said. “You’re not going to have the best race of your regatta when you start like that but I was just trying to salvage it the best I could, so I was pretty happy with my speed and doing that to a reasonable extent. It was definitely character building.”

Stranksy finished 19th in that race, and admitted she found a unique way to deal with being at the back of the fleet.

“Mostly I was singing to myself as I tried to fight back. I’ve had races like that before and there’s been times when I’ve not been in the right mindset and other times where I’ve made some pretty good comebacks, so I knew I could do it and I just tried to sing to myself to stay relaxed.” 

She managed to claw back a few more places in her next race of the day, coming 16th after another tricky start.

“In the next race my aim was to be on the line but I got so fixated on where it was that I forgot I needed some space to get moving and I got a bit caught up with other boats,” she said. “It’s hard when you’re getting bounced around to see the bigger picture so I didn’t do that very well and got caught on the wrong side of the fleet.” 

Despite the tough sailing, the Olympic debutant can see the positives.

“The theme was my day was trying to make a comeback. It’s hard that it’s my first event in 18 months and it’s the Olympic Games. There’s a whole lot of things that I haven’t experienced in a while not being around a big fleet, so there’s a few things I need to iron out but I’m learning a lot.”

Wednesday will see Australia’s Olympic medallists Will Ryan and Mat Belcher take to the water in the men’s 470 class. And the Nacra 17 mixed multihull crew of Lisa Darmanin and Jason Waterhouse will also begin their Olympic campaign.

Katherin Firkin