Race Report 17/10/2010

Yet another cracking weekend..!!
How nuts was the wind on Saturday..!! Code flag Sausage was flying high :o) Although Timmy has now been sacked from sausage coordinator... 5 sausages do not go far with skiffies... What were you thinking..!!!

So yeah for those of you who didn't turn up to the club on Saturday... It was howling... When we arrived it was 32-36kts out there... It eased a bit.. 26-32.. They were thinking long and hard about racing and I think if there were more than one 12 ft skiff on the rigging lawn they would have been swayed... However the volunteers had their meeting and the racing was cancelled...

Sunday however...............

GLORIOUS..!!!! Richard and I took out the Grove... It was a perfect second rig when we were rigging... Probably big rig if I had the Tristan the ton onboard, but it was second rig for Richard and I :o)
We rigged with half a dozen 13's.. A chubby, a 16 and an old 18 footer...

The briefing was short and sweet... 5 laps for the 16 and 4 for the rest... Ha..!! Like B-Rand and the Millers would lap us on a day like yesterday.. Hahaha Suckers..!!

So we hit the water in high spirits.. Team Grove looked the goods (I wore some fancy new wetsuit pants) and were gagging to test out Richards new c'board.... We set off to the startline and boy were we worried.. The set it up right down near Lota creek... We were a bit worried about the depth... The waves were steep and the water looked brown.. Not the sort of test we had in mind for the new fin..... Anyway we smashed the start... Full power and clear air... We were in front..!! Woot woot..!!

The chop was a bit annoying as there wasn't quite enough waterline length or power in our rig to punch through it.. However we got to the top mark not that far behind Data 3.. We sent it down hill and may have caught up a little bit but the bit we caught up was lost when the kite retrieval got knotted on the drop.. We did the next leg with no real gain but we put a bit of distance on the 13's...
The next kite ride was probably the highlight... We did a couple of gybes because we weren't under any pressure and we were "a bit bored"... We came to the drop and my enthusiasm got me in a bit of trouble.... My lovely soft skippers hands got a rude shock when I went for the big pull on the retrieval line and the kite got stuck on the forestay... My hands kept going after the rope stopped... I started bleeding from my hands and on the next windward I turned to Rich and asked.. "how many times do I have to pull that bi*ch up again" and I showed him my bleeding fingers... Richie drove us to the top mark where we did a super mega ultra elegant crew/skipper swap... Richie set the kite and the wind eased... It was definitely big rig now.. Oh well... The gap between us and the 16 didn't really change and the gap to the 13's was about the same... We were just sailing for the fun of it on our own... We could feel the victory coming but it didn't really excite us... The wind dropped under 10 kts and we were one and a half stringing for pretty much the rest of the race... On lap 4 the 13's caught up a little bit, but not enough to threaten us at all.. We sailed through the finish and got the gun.. Hip hip hooray to the flying Grove..!! It was a lovely day on the water even without the crazy rides of the previous week...

The verdict on the c'board is still undecided... It certainly doesn't feel slow... But it's hard to know without other 12's around you... Next week will be the real test..!!!

Thanks Richo for taking me out yesterday.. Enjoy the win.. They will be few and far between this season... PB is on the program.. We're in it to win it..!!!

Tristan might have a few good stories from the weekend too.. He flew to Syd for his 20 year school reunion... Missed his flight home.... Ended up at the Gold Coast...