Week 3

Yes, been slack. Skinnyman has been sending emails about the racing so i've copied one here...

Hey hey.!!!

I know you all must be gagging to hear what happened on Saturday.. Well what really happened that is..

The two Mathews hulls rigged up together.. There were very few boats on the lawn with weddings and grandfinals going on that day.. It was actually kinda eerie.. Oh and there was not a breath of wind and it was looking very much like rain... PERFECT..!!!!

Before we threw a rig in, I went and had a chat with the race officials to ask if there was any wind out there.. Or if there was any on the way.. All Suellen said was better put in Big Rig...

I got back and we threw in the biggest gear we had... After Richard dusted off the Grove that is.. We sat around talking sh1t as we do and finally we left the beach.. Rich was sailing with Benny and I was taking Rory (a 12ft skiff newbie..)

Launching was uneventful.. That is all.

On the way to the startline however I noticed I had completely rigged the retrieval system incorrectly.. So for the rest of the sail out to the startline Rory and I were stuffing around rerigging it all :o) What a glorious start to the day..

By the time the start gun went there was enough breeze to pull two strings and it was building... The Grove started on the pin and PB was smashing it out with 9ers up at the boat end... Full steam ahead and the 49er carved us both a new one.. It was slightly embarrassing... However, things looked better for us when the Grove boys tacked and we were clear ahead... Happy days.. We decided to tack on top of them.. This would have made us rockstars.. Unfortunately we never made it through the tack... Yep, we were Flopstars... We followed the Grove around the track and without them making a mistake and that was that... We had been punished for making a simple error... Well done to the Grove team...

Race two was fresh... There were white caps and I was wishing my super dooper lightening fast second rig was plugged in... We had the board up and cunno cranked... The Grove boys started on port because they were worried they had left it too late to try and tack on to Starboard... This proved to be their best mistake ever..!! They ducked the fleet and the 30m we went past them was the 30m gap that cost us the race... That was until the downwind....... We had some great rides on Saturday.. Skipping along on the transom with big rig... WEIRD..!!! Rory and I picked some great angles... Grove did too.. Except their angles didn't quite correlate with the RQ course..... Richie and Ben took a short cut and went through some random gate marks... Rookie mistake..!!! Rory and I sailed the true course and if Benny hadn't bought the jug of beer when we had returned to the beach, there would have been a protest...

All in all it was a fantastic day on the water..!! Rory had a blast and I reckon he would be keen for another ride sometime.. I can't wait to put the big rig away for summer though... Bring on 3rd rig..!!!