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Highlights:
Not stuffing up the entire race: Managing to maintain good teamwork (including the skipper) after leg two: Hoisting, gybing and dropping the Bitch without any snarl-ups: Hamish not dropping anything overboard: Having a stopwatch aboard for the first time.
Downers:
Skippers as start tacticians - especially when they havn't got a plan until less than two minutes from the start.
Result:
4th on PYR and Personal. Yuk.
Lessons Learnt:
Sort out our start plan earlier. Don't try to be 'bang on the gun heros'. Adopt a more considered approach to transit starts and ask ourselves why are we on Starboard when the rest of the fleet is on Port and, what do they know that we don't?
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Race 3 Autumn Series. Medium Inshore. Friday 7th November
Wind 5-13 North westerly rising to 17 knots later
Well it's a late briefing today, at 10:00 for an 11:00 start, (just as well as I've been up until 3 am at a party and am feeling very much the worse for wear). The forecast people are obviously hedging their bets today with the forecast above, and we decide not to use the big jib, thinking the wind's going to fill in later. Down at the start area, Kaos is changing her headsail every five minutes, charging the transit line trying to find the wind. We cruise around and within two minutes notice all the boats starting on Port, so I decide to go to the pin-end, tack on to Starboard and, through this stunning masterpiece of nautical strategy, stuff up the fleet. Boy, did that one go wrong!
We're way early for the line so have to gybe around, finish up miles below the fleet all accelerating away on port, and end up crossing the transit on Starboard thinking that we'll hang on out to the opposite side of the course from the others, get a huge lift and arrive at the windward mark well ahead due to our amazing tactical skills. Wrong. We get headed instead, making our position even worse!
Never ever allow the skipper to go out the night before and arrive for a race dog-tired and in need of synthetic stimulants. And if so, then never, ever allow him to call race tactics!
We finally manage to pull away from the fleet on leg three, downwind to Earth Station. Then it's a reach to Shoal Spar (which has disappeared, so Ken had to organise a temporary mark in its place) and a beat back up to Pumphouse Port. The wind is variable to say the least. Shifting through about 40 degrees, gaining and fading as well, plus we find really big holes in it - areas of no wind - but there are no glassy patches on the water to warn us, so we end up sailing straight into quite a lot of them. Another run down to Shoal Spar (which we nearly miss, thinking it has dragged, as it's well South of where we thought it should be) and a reach to Earth Station sees us drawing ahead constantly. But it's not enough.
Bob, having lost his hat earlier, now loses patience with his stopwatch, throws it into the cabin but misses and chucks it with some force into the water instead. It was a good one too, and cost him eight Dinars in the Souq.
The crew are being very nice about the appalling start and have settled into a routine of trimming, hiking and sometimes actually shutting up for a few minutes, letting the helm concentrate as we head back to the finish transit of Pumphouse through West Pole. The wind is trying to maintain a steady direction a bit west of North and allows us to reach the transit on the same tack, where we finish at 13:24:55, some seventeen minutes ahead of Kaos and the rest of the fleet.
After the usual packing up we get down to the real business of the day in the Clubhouse bar and find at de-brief that we've come 4th on PYR and 4th on Personal handicaps. Our faces are long with bottom lips pouting. But it's not too bad: If we had finished three and a half minutes earlier we would have won. Which means that after leg 2 we started sailing quite well again. That's our story anyway. Much mention is made of our stunning hull graphics and again we have to remind our fellow racers that "they're not bloody dogs, they're Jackals. Anyway, now we've lulled the rest of the fleet into a false sense of security about our performance, so it'll be easier to get them next time! Or will it? We'll see....
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