Wednesday 16 December 2015

A game of two halves Jimmy

After weeks of too-much-wind, not-enough-wind and too-few-centigrades, we finally had summat you could sail in. Now admittedly the bush forecast was a little out, it was probably a bit over 20mph in the morning, and it didn't drop to 10mph until about 2pm, but it was still mostly sailable and not too cold either. 

Race 1 - M, B, D, P
Of the 12 assembled Fireball sailors, 2 stayed ashore waiting for less wind and 2 more had a swim by the start-line and then came back (I think). That left 4 boats to start the race. Of those, Bob & Paul capsized with the kite up at the end of the run, had a swim, destroyed their mainsail and came back in. Helen & Paul had a swim up near A, got the mast stuck in the mud, and came back in.Peter & David had a swim halfway down the run, broke a trapeze wire and came back in. And that only left yours truly and Poorly Paul to saunter round for the allotted hour and then finish. No swimming included smile emoticon
The morning course (basically a rectangle, beat, 2 beam reaches and a run) would have been great in a F3, but was just hard work in the conditions we had then, and offered no 3-sail reaches at all. Boo!

Race 2 - B, OL, X, P

In the afternoon we had a triangle with a kink in it, with a really nice broad reach from B to OL, which was clearly going to be just awesome - unless the wind dropped. Which it did.  But it did boast a closer reach from OL to X too, so we still had a good time, and a fetch from X to P which was useless.

The assembled boats (now down to 4) managed all this without any incidents, although Peter & Dave took a commanding lead while I was trying to get the (not particularly) fast-pins to come out, and went on to win by miles.  We came in 2nd, with Helen & Paul not so far behind us and Bob & Paul not too far behind them.
Incidentally, I have worked out why the water-level in the lake is still quite low - there's at least 1000 gallons of it goes home in my sailbag every week, bloody drysuit is more of a water accumulation device, everything I own is now soggy.
Also I ache all over. Aargh!