The horn blows and it’s a drag race into Hen and Chicken. We have SF creeping up to windward along the mooring line, RSGT just ahead to leeward, AOE are just on the bow, with LOEG fluffing about at the start and NL with a novice crew giving everyone some space.
Dan had taken the helm to get us out on the water and then some minor adjustments saw JR on the tiller, Dan on the main, Ele and Mandy on trim and Patto looking good at the front.
We held ground with everyone and even as AOE luffed up high on their line in front of us we kept our foot in it. Tactics told us to follow SF for the first tack, Rob yelling at us on a starboard tack, and LOEG closing toward 4 and then….. 2 small errors on 2 tacks saw LOEG go past and the leaders get away. An override and the sheet on the winch the wrong way. It’s all happing out here today!!!
Around 4 with some wind behind and we ran down to 1 with no major dramas, keeping an eye on the front runners and their tactics. With the breeze up around 15 on the river and over 20 in the bay it was a tough day on trim, so we rotated the trim a bit to ease the pain (and to give Patto some work to do).
One job….. I had one job, get the spinnaker up and flying….. Well I didn’t. not till the club house anyway. I did what I was told and got the barber haulers, I even set up sheet and lazy brace ropes to make it easier to jibe and I still couldn’t get the pole up without ropes tangled. We finally had the pink thing up and flying past the club and down to 1. It feels pretty good when you get the kite running nice. The drop was a bit shit too as the kite got wet and dragged in the water pulling to halyard through the clutch.
The field has gotten away a bit now and NL seems to have worked out what to do as they start to catch us back up to 4 and then pass us down wind back to 1. They had overlap and we would have to had given room as they were windward but about 100m from the mark they dump the sail and stall and let us go. Very gracious but I suspect the new crew didn’t want to get too close to mad Patto (yes the adrenaline had kicked in and I was going a bit crazy).
Again NL went past us on the work back to 5 but with the Halyard sorted, the kite repacked and ready to go and with one last throw of the dice we decided to get the kite flying again. The big question was will we get it up before the finish.
Answer.......... YES. And we managed to pip them at the post by 1 second even with me strangling the kite due to over excitement.
We managed to get the win on handicap and we were pretty happy to celebrate into the night at the BBQ.
Thanks to the volunteers and the club for the great fun out there as well as Div 3 for a stellar BBQ.
We held ground with everyone and even as AOE luffed up high on their line in front of us we kept our foot in it. Tactics told us to follow SF for the first tack, Rob yelling at us on a starboard tack, and LOEG closing toward 4 and then….. 2 small errors on 2 tacks saw LOEG go past and the leaders get away. An override and the sheet on the winch the wrong way. It’s all happing out here today!!!
Around 4 with some wind behind and we ran down to 1 with no major dramas, keeping an eye on the front runners and their tactics. With the breeze up around 15 on the river and over 20 in the bay it was a tough day on trim, so we rotated the trim a bit to ease the pain (and to give Patto some work to do).
One job….. I had one job, get the spinnaker up and flying….. Well I didn’t. not till the club house anyway. I did what I was told and got the barber haulers, I even set up sheet and lazy brace ropes to make it easier to jibe and I still couldn’t get the pole up without ropes tangled. We finally had the pink thing up and flying past the club and down to 1. It feels pretty good when you get the kite running nice. The drop was a bit shit too as the kite got wet and dragged in the water pulling to halyard through the clutch.
The field has gotten away a bit now and NL seems to have worked out what to do as they start to catch us back up to 4 and then pass us down wind back to 1. They had overlap and we would have to had given room as they were windward but about 100m from the mark they dump the sail and stall and let us go. Very gracious but I suspect the new crew didn’t want to get too close to mad Patto (yes the adrenaline had kicked in and I was going a bit crazy).
Again NL went past us on the work back to 5 but with the Halyard sorted, the kite repacked and ready to go and with one last throw of the dice we decided to get the kite flying again. The big question was will we get it up before the finish.
Answer.......... YES. And we managed to pip them at the post by 1 second even with me strangling the kite due to over excitement.
We managed to get the win on handicap and we were pretty happy to celebrate into the night at the BBQ.
Thanks to the volunteers and the club for the great fun out there as well as Div 3 for a stellar BBQ.
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