Well, no sailing for me today, it turns out that Poorly Paul managed to hurt his back when he picked up his sailing bag last week, and he's still a bit hors de combat this weekend. Plus it was freezing cold and a bit snowy, so I wasn't hugely tempted anyway.
Still, there were enough of us at the club to put about 5 Fireballs on the water, and 4 of them managed to get out for the 2nd race which made us the biggest fleet out there. We were also on OD duty for the 3rd week in a row, so lost a boat to that.
A turnout of 4 boats is a bit rubbish if I'm honest, but there are plenty of reasons for it, not least the cold, the water level and the Xmas, and those reasons have affected all the other fleets too:
2 Solos
2 Lasers
0 W/L
And nothing else managed more than 1 boat.
Whilst sitting around in the wet bar and chewing the fat, a few of the fleet guys and I figured it might be good to build the fleet up a bit next year. We gained 3 boats last year without trying too hard, but you can't have too many, and you just know that the economy and the water level will have a negative effect come renewal time in April, so we need to get our retaliation in early.
There are a few tactics we can employ to get the fleet numbers up, and the first one we're hoping to use is to acquire a fleet boat. This will allow people who don't have a fireball to get to know the boat before having to buy one, and it's a tactic we've employed with some success in the past with our previous fleet boat, 'Firestarter'. Whether or not we'll get the funding to buy ourselves a new one is another matter...
Fireball Fleet Reloaded - watch this space.
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