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Highlights:
Not a lot. A rather uneventful race.
Downers:
Bloody wind. None of it when Jackal's out there. Loads smack after we finish, perfect for the rest of the fleet. Crew boredom, through lack of broaching.
Result:
4th on Club Handicap. Hate to think about IRC performance. Probably much worse.
Lessons Learnt:
Install a silent drive underwater caterpillar propulsion unit, just like wot TNTs got.
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Winter Series Race 2. Friday 3 Febrauary
Wind 5-10 knots, South Easterly, becoming 10 - 15 knots at times. ('Knot' should read 'Not')
Reasonably uneventful today, so not much to report. Another briefing at 10:00. Another start at 11:30 for Division 1 boats, with Division 2 half an hour earlier. Same team as last race too. But the wind's from the South, and looks good too.
Out on the water we raise the main, unfurl the jib and set to gybing and tacking around to position for the start. This time it's on a transit of Al Bander port poles, keeping the Green and White spar to port on our first leg to West Pole. There's a gentle breeze right up until the start when everything stops dead. We sneak about on port and tack very slowly onto starboard, gaining a slot at the weather end of the line but just a bit late - about 20 seconds, drat. Continuing, we glide past other even more stationary yachts and slowly inch our way to the first mark. Division 2 boats are miles away, having started in good wind, as we battle our way through large clumps of weed drifting on a millpond.
Approaching West Pole after a couple of rather languid tacks, we encounter Blue Chip who, drifting sideways, make at least four attempts to round the mark against the tide (causing a duffers' prize nomination at de-brief). But we scrape past them, and set for a downwind to Pumphouse mark, raising our spinnaker in expectation of the rush; the adrenaline of speed. Not this time. She hangs limply, stirred feebly by about half a knot of 'wind', requiring Hamish to hold the sail out to windward for almost an hour, (good exercise for his arms) while Bob holds the other end in the same manner. Neil is bored. Something about "why can't we do really cool broaching stuff where it's all panic and action?" I explain that we can't do that without wind. Somehow we maintain our lead over Rapscallion who's drifting sideways really fast in the current, and somehow manage to round the mark to come onto a beat for Shoal Spar. A slow beat. Very slow. At least with the apparent wind it feels slightly faster than our run.
But we manage to keep some slight degree of boat speed and slowly reach the mark, somehow round it and set the spinnaker for a run to West Pole. By this time we're chasing down TNT, but it takes us until the next upwind leg to pass them. There's just so little wind.
Things are looking up as we round Shoal Spar again as the wind has filled in to all of about 3 knots, and we set the spinnaker and sail angles to try to reach Pumphouse before 15:00 hours (course shortening time). We're out in front now, but not by nearly enough. WE've been out here all day... TNT is sailing a straight spinnaker course for the mark and we have to sail angles in very light wind, but we finally round the mark and record our time for this course-shortened finish. We miss rounding in time by 2 minutes, so that's it. End of race.
Just as Hamish calls "now" and Bob records our time, there's a huge blast of wind. It goes from 3 konots to 15 instantly, settles immediately and consistently, and provides wonderful sailing for the rest of the fleet. Dolphins arrive all around Jackal, to make us feel better until we notice that they're actually laughing at our distress.
It's not supposed to happen like this. WE have wind. WE finish. THEN the wind dies. Not the other way round. It's so unfair. We're 35 minutes ahead of TNT, but that's not enough in nearly four hours of 'sailing', or should I say, drifting. We're only about 15 minutes ahead of Touch and Go, who've clearly won... Where the hell did they come from?
But the real sneaky one is Aquilla, who tack out to the reef on the first leg, overhaul Rapscallion, sail like greased bloody lightening around the rest of the course and end up beating us on handicap as well. Double drat.
So they, TNT and Touch and Go get a bottle of cheap wine and we don't. |
