The rain stopped, the sun came out, the winds dropped and Thursday became a stupendous day of racing on top of the tide - one of those perfect days.
The rain stopped, the sun came out, the winds dropped and Thursday became a stupendous day of racing on top of the tide - one of those perfect days.
Although not a great start to the day, the jib halyard decided to run up the mast all by itself- 999 call to Haines -paraboat medic Ryan came out and fixed us. We made it to the start line - The race down to Beach via East Head and Johns Folly was very exciting, and extremely busy. A bit like trying to cross all 6 lanes on the M25, the world and his boat went racing and all seemed to want to cross where we were passing. So busy looking out for very fast dinghies shooting past we almost missed noticing this very alarming enormous wave breaking over the Winner bank -like a tsunami- a quick scream and immediate tack was in order, very chuffed we'd avoided it - until rounding Beach!
Spinnaker up and off we went straight onto a rollercoaster ride of surfing on top of these huge waves, picking us high up planing along the top and then dumping us down again. We watched in horror at X83 just in front of us. Phil turned just at the moment the wave hit and took them up high above us. What a ride, scary and exhilarating all at once. Unfortunately for us the course was lengthened on the finishing line so by the time we actually finished most of the sailors voted with their sails and missed the last race out.
Well done to Penny in Madeleine winner overall with Roger 2nd in Xcitation and Damian 3rd in Wenda. The Petes were 4th in Falconet.
What a race, what a day! If you want to see results they are on the club website. As racing doesn't count this year there are no results on the XOD website.
I wasn't going to mention Sunday but - well you all know WE WON, first place in a real race. The first squall hit just before the race, with winds up to 20 knots, the sea was really rough and within minutes we were soaked. Watching 26 grounding, we followed Roger and half the fleet across the harbour to the Stocker bank but then he tacked back, so we decided not to follow him and kept going, Felicity, chief dipper, dipping all the way. 100 ran aground soon after.
The sky was very grey and the next squall arrived, it was impossible to see where SW Pilsey was, so we started to look around for the other boats to follow, surely Roger would be ahead on the other side, we couldn't see him and suddenly we realised we were alone having to find the buoy ourselves, in first place miles ahead of everyone - How did we do that!?
Phoenix won the 2nd race.
Next weekend is a bank holiday so lots more racing and then straight into our keelboat week, then the following weekend, plenty of racing ahead!