Sunday 1 August 2010

1 Aug 2010

Bloody hell, it's August already, and right on cue the wind has dropped off to the sort of level that I was recently commenting that we hadn't seen much of this summer.

Well Badders and a few others were missing from the boatpark, but Mo had come back from Abersoch (2nd place, respect!) and a couple of suspiciously hotshotty types were day-sailing a nice shiny bit of kit with a view to joining up for the winter, so we still managed a decent turnout of about 8 boats.

Sadly I wasn't one of the 'decent turnout' in the morning as I was crewless and therefore in the RS300. I will digress at this point and mention that the 300 is a more interesting boat than the Fireball in light airs, largely because it threatens to fall over at the least provocation, which keeps you on your toes. But with a turnout of precisely 2 (one of whom - me - was late for the start) it wasn't exactly an interesting race and I have come to the conclusion that an 'interesting' boat in isolation is no substitute for a big fleet. Anyway, after boring the pants off me and wearing me out for the entire race, the 300 then fell over in spectacular style on the finish line in front of the clubhouse, thereby adding public humiliation to the list 

Thanks to Karen for offering to swim out and get me as I drifted past BTW - I didn't want to get my feet wet...

Back to the Fireball for the PM race, and we had a good 4 boat battle between me/Kris, Mo/Holly, Bob/Paul and the new blokes. Eventually we dropped the latter 2 (who continued to fight it out) and spent some time following Mo round the course. Twice we got past, and twice Mo came back, with a nice variety of tactical stuff on the shy reaches and dead runs. Well we got lucky at 'K' when Mo had to give water to a Solo, and on spotting that it had left a nice gap on the exit we dived through and took the lead. End result was a win for me and Kris, but it could equally well have been Mo and Holly had the Solo not been there.

Third race, we won the start and zoomed off at the pin end along the shore while behind us everyone else was tacking off. And what's this, woohoo, a big patch of wind arrived just for us, Kris jumped out on the wire and we stormed away into a lead which looked a lot like game-over for the rest of them. Sadly, when the patch of wind finally arrived at the fleet, they ended up with a lift the size of Mt. Etna, and by the time we'd crawled back over to the right hand side of the beat we were no longer in the lead and in fact were painfully close to a Solo. Booo!

Worse yet, the beat had pretty much evaporated, so we followed Bob round for a few laps and then finished 3rd across the line / 2nd Fireball / 3rd on handicap. Not brilliant, but still better than mowing the lawn.

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