13 Jun 2010

So another day when you might have thought that the wind was too light and fluffy for anyone to have any fun, and again you'd have been wrong. I skipped the morning race to take part in a fun run and bicycle thing, so turned up at midday to find that the morning had been a bit rubbish. But the wind was filling in, so I bagsied Paul Roe, Jez went and commandeered Richard out of his Buzz, all boats now suitably crewed up and off we went. First beat was a bit so-so and heavily biased, and we all turned up at 'B' in a big lump. Round B, up with the kites, mine got stuck, rubbish hoist, ah well. Pootle down to 'M', go low to avoid the pack, reach goes all close, take kite down, squeeze round 'M', gybe, bung kite back up again. All Fireballs bar about 2 are now immediately in front or immediately behind, reach to 'P' very interesting, We sail over Colin, Mo luffs us up, somebody else sails over Mo, Badders goes low, Paul is in there somewhere and Jez, we go down the middle, end up about 3rd at 'P'. Sail past mark, then gybe late to avoid the pack - pack promptly get a bit of a puff and threaten to zoom past, then don't. Round 'S', stupid fetch to 'J', nothing interesting happens on this leg at all. Then short beat to 'OL', run down to 'T' and we start the next lap in 2nd place a bit behind Badders.

This beat really tricky, starts off as simple tacking on the shifts type of thing, we go left, get ahead of Badders, all going nicely. Then we spot Mo coming in from the LHS of the beat on port tack pointing high and going fast. Other boats on LHS also looking good, quick, go over there (on starboard), get headed, tack onto Port, Mo now 1,000,000 miles ahead but below us, Colin just about level and above us. Still lifting on Port, we can now lay 'B' easily. Mo gets headed, tacks across, now behind us again. We get headed, can't lay 'B', go on, tack, weirdly now in front of Colin and everyone else, how that happen ?

Round 'B', up with kite, halyard stuck between leeward spreader and mainsail, bugger about a bit, finally get it flying. Colin still behind us, albeit a bit upwind now, how that happen, scratch head, more wind, zoom off to 'M' with entire fleet breathing down our necks. Gybe onto port at 'M', Badders and Colin cary on down the shore on Starboard, no idea why it's completely the wrong direction, ah well. Mo chasing us hard now, the run upgrades itself to a beam reach, Colin has gybed and is down the toilet, Baddders went even further and is round the U bend as probably can't even lay 'P' from there with the kite up. Mo chases us round 'P' and fails to sit on our wind properly all the way to 'S'. One more fetch and tiny beat to go, still in the lead, hurrah!

Notice that Miracles are going up the beat pointing very high on starboard tack, so instruct crew to leave kite up for fetch to 'J' as it's clearly going to be a lot broader this time. Mo takes his kite down, reach promptly goes horribly close, we have to take kite down and end up tacking, try to put a lee-bow on Mo but he points too high for us and wriggles out of it. We end up downwind, sailing through the moored boats by the wall as Mo storms along further out. I have blown the race, tack onto Port, Mo can now call 'Starboard' and stuff me up but for some reason he tacks too and promptly has trouble getting around 'J'. By the time we get around 'J', I'm upwind and ahead and only have to get to OL, which I can lay from here. Mo tacks off for clear air, shall we tack to cover him, crew says 'yes', I say sod it, can lay OL anyway, why tack?

Wind promptly drops, heads us, Mo has tacked again inshore, loadsa wind, big lift, storms past upwind going faster and pointing higher, and again I have blown the race, this time too late to fix it. Mo wins by about 10 seconds, Badders almost creeps in too. All very close, I am an idiot, should have tacked to cover. But I still had a great race