Roller coaster riding – Race 4/8
Windy and choppy sums up the conditions today, gusting over 20 knots from the SW. These aren’t our best conditions – being light we struggle in heavy weather, but having said that there are plenty of other lightweights in the fleet too!
Today we took off from the far righthand end of the gate start. This was a good with clear air and open water, getting to the windward mark around 20th. The reaches were amazing, fast wave-riding planing all the way, and here we were able to make up a few places. Liz makes a superb spray deflector!!
In the end we finished 26th after a gruelling 1.5hr slog. Everyone looks as knackered as we feel right now.
The race wasn’t without incident. Several boats capsized around the course, and we only just escaped a swim by the narrowest of margins ourselves.
A couple of protests were made too. We are witness to one of the incidents, a barge on the leeward mark that messed us and another boat up. The protest hearing will be held at 1900 this evening.
Tonight the crews and helms split – the helms to the ‘Helms Dinner’ and the crews to the rather less sophisticated ‘Crews Union’, where it seems food is banned and potent punch is obligatory. But what would I know – the details of this dubious organisation are closely guarded secrets.
Tomorrow the fleet gets split in half on the racecourse too – the front half of the fleet racing for the most prestigious prize in Firefly racing, the “Sir Ralph Gore Cup”, whilst the remaining boats sail in the Marlow with a new mainsheet on offer for the winner. Entrants into the Gore are worked out by results in the previous races, so with our 9th we will qualify for the Gore. The Gore is a marathon of a race, with a time limit of 4.5 hours – more on that later.
We are still praying for lighter winds over the next few days.
Catch lata,
Ben
Windy and choppy sums up the conditions today, gusting over 20 knots from the SW. These aren’t our best conditions – being light we struggle in heavy weather, but having said that there are plenty of other lightweights in the fleet too!
Today we took off from the far righthand end of the gate start. This was a good with clear air and open water, getting to the windward mark around 20th. The reaches were amazing, fast wave-riding planing all the way, and here we were able to make up a few places. Liz makes a superb spray deflector!!
In the end we finished 26th after a gruelling 1.5hr slog. Everyone looks as knackered as we feel right now.
The race wasn’t without incident. Several boats capsized around the course, and we only just escaped a swim by the narrowest of margins ourselves.
A couple of protests were made too. We are witness to one of the incidents, a barge on the leeward mark that messed us and another boat up. The protest hearing will be held at 1900 this evening.
Tonight the crews and helms split – the helms to the ‘Helms Dinner’ and the crews to the rather less sophisticated ‘Crews Union’, where it seems food is banned and potent punch is obligatory. But what would I know – the details of this dubious organisation are closely guarded secrets.
Tomorrow the fleet gets split in half on the racecourse too – the front half of the fleet racing for the most prestigious prize in Firefly racing, the “Sir Ralph Gore Cup”, whilst the remaining boats sail in the Marlow with a new mainsheet on offer for the winner. Entrants into the Gore are worked out by results in the previous races, so with our 9th we will qualify for the Gore. The Gore is a marathon of a race, with a time limit of 4.5 hours – more on that later.
We are still praying for lighter winds over the next few days.
Catch lata,
Ben
1 comment:
Well done Liz on being a good spray deflector - will pass that on to Gary - could be good for your KSF!
Joking apart, well done on completing the race - sounded very hard work from what Ben wrote.
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