Then shortly after 10am Gordon rang up and I was reminded that I had offered to crew for him if he couldn't get anyone else, and there he was standing on the shore with a boat and no crew. So I put the kit in the bag, bade a hasty farewell to the fambly and zoomed off. The usual time dilation occurred, so by the time I was changed and had found my locker key and made my way to the boat, it was 10:50am and by the way the start is at 'B'. But there was a bit of wind and Gordon had rigged the entire boat and put it in the water and was even wearing the crew's uniform, so feeling something akin to royalty I leapt aboard and started issuing orders.
We made it to the start with whole minutes to spare. I won't bore you with the actual race, suffice to say that Mr Anthony put a move on me which sent us off to the wrong side of the beat and we lost out, and then we went to the wrong side of the run in a desperate catch-up move and lost out even more. But it was good tactical racing and good fun to boot. And whilst I could have been hooning around in the 49er (if I'd remembered to bring the sails and foils) I doubt it would ever have been as interesting as doing the tactical racing thing with the rest of the fleet**.
Anyhoo, the wind dropped at lunchtime, and whilst we started the 2nd race, we all decided that the millpond conditions were just too light to continue past OL. But that was genuinely no wind at all, burgee going round and round type stuff. Anything above that was OK and really not as ghastly as you might have thought. So I'm now looking forward to next Sunday with renewed enthusiasm.
Many thanks to Gordon for donating the boat and the general get-up-and-go.
* They lie to us you know. Don't trust 'em.
** One of these days I will give it a try and find out
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