Sunday 17 May 2009

FireBowl 2011 - day 1

And what a great day's sailing that was. Nice F3-4, brilliant sunshine, plenty of boats to race against. It doesn't get much better than that.

We got off to a bit of a late start due to OD failure - many thanks to Tom Vian for stepping into the breach there and rescuing the day for the rest of us.

Then we had a bit of a timing failure with the start, although I *think* that everyone got off more or less on target. But how nice that nobody marched up at lunchtime and threatened to protest the results - you guys know how to keep this stuff in perspective.

I'm not sure how many boats we had taking part, must have been 12 or so, and this was without Badders, Martyn, Dangerous Dave and a few others.

AM race, well I'll need somebody who had sight of the lead to tell me what went on at the front. I was resolutely last for quite a long time before overtaking anyone...Iain with 'rookie' (foiling Moth sailor) crew Tom, Mo and Holly when they binned it on the tight leg to 'C', Mike and Adam when their main halyard broke. Pat and Jane were still going strong when we overtook them at 'F' - they'd sailed the entire race without capsizing which was pretty neat considering the conditions. We ended up in a little gaggle of boats all fighting it out up the last beat to 'J', including Bob, Helen, JT, Paul Anthony and possibly another boat too. I thought we'd done a decent job of nailing most of 'em, but caught a header at 'J', hit the mark, and lost a place to JT while doing my 360 on the way to OL. Gordon was already on the shore by this stage, having demolished the rest of us, with Colin and Karen picking up 2nd. Paul Anthony, Peter Wood and JT shared the next few places, but I'm not sure in which order - results will doubtless be posted shortly.

Then a nice relaxed lunch, followed by race 2. Now I'm pretty sure I explained to the fleet that y'all weren't to go through the start line when you rounded 'P' on the first lap, so some of you will be getting a detention just as soon as I find out who exactly it was in the little group who sailed through the Solos' start line on port tack. And from there, well it was just another fabulous race in a good breeze and strong sunshine. We went left up the first beat to 'M' and caught up with loads of boats who took the long way round, but we had kite problems for a lap after that so spent a lot of time fighting it out with Pete and Serena while flying the kite at half-mast or not flying it at all. Again it was pretty close at the finish, this time Mo and Holly got almost to 'J' before having their little swim - and I'm pretty sure a few others had done the same thing previously.

Most of us called it a day at that point, but three boats went out for guaranteed good results in the last race and two of them had a let's-see-who-can-capsize-the-best competition. I think Paul and Nick won that, but I'm guessing that Pete and Serena will have ended up with first place when the numbers are worked out.

All in all, an excellent day's racing. See y'all on day 2 on May 22nd, 2 weeks time.