Tuesday 25 August 2015

Worlds - Tuesday

Y and Y did a nice write-up of today's racing:http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/…/Gul-Fireball-Worlds-at-P…

We had another day of mixed fortunes. We had a decent enough start in the first race, but it was a general recall. We then missed the re-start altogether and crossed the line (at the wrong end) about a minute behind the rest of the fleet. Luckily it was quite windy, so we overtook a lot of boats that were upside down and quite a few that weren't, and ended up just inside the top half. The centre-board had taken to sliding up on the fast 2 and 3 sail reaches, which is a massively bad idea when you're hurtling down the back of a wave whilst trying not to lose the crew on the lumpy bits. I tied a bit of string to it so it couldn't come all the way up after that.

For race 2, I sailed doggedly up and down the start-line so the buggers couldn't go without me, and wound up near the (favoured) pin end with about 90 seconds to go, so we parked up and watched the hotshots doing the clever stuff about 3 boat lengths ahead of us. There was no room to get in amongst them, so we hung back and followed them across the line. We were in dirty air but it was pretty windy by this time so there was plenty for everyone. We then charged off to the left hand side of the course, and upon tacking found that we were on the lay line for the windward mark. We must have gone round in the mid 20s, and although we lost a few places to passing hotshots, we also took a few back from people who were as surprised as us to be up there, and some who capsized in the (frankly mental) lumpy water on the reaches and runs.

We did a lot of excellent surfing down the backs of waves, buried the bow a few times, and Paul came back and sat in my seat on the runs, which made steering a bit tricky at times. The 2 sail reach was very hard work, with the crew unable to get low enough to gain traction without risking being knocked off the boat by the next lump of water. In the first race we spent ages chasing Badders (and never caught him). In this one we didn't see him at all, although he was apparently somewhere in the vicinity until he had an unfortunate spinnaker-pole / buoyancy-aid interface issue leading to some swimming and a massive fall down the results table. We were in a respectable 26th place, which I traded for a 27th rather than play silly buggers with the next place boat on the final leg. A great days sailing, and now a day off to recover.

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