Race 2 and 3

Light NW winds and sunshine greeted the 66 competitors this morning in Tenby. Tenby is a lot like a welsh version of St Ives. Not just the buckets and spades and inflatable dinghies adourning every shop front, but the same beautiful beaches, harbour and narrow streets. The driving ban betwen 10 and 5pm would be a good idea for St Ives too.

Already few bruises on display throughout the fleet.

Race one was meant to be a traditional line-start, but after 3 failed attempts at getting a fair start away the race committee opted for a gate start instead.

Then the gate start too was abandoned mid-way, but a second gate-start got the fleet underway at long last. A pretty frustrating race for us as we went from looking very good to mid-fleet to down-the-pan, then crawled our way back to 20th at the finish. Once again Dave & Betty finished first RSC boat, finishing 2 boats in front of us and having had a similar race.

Race 2
Once again we started at the beginning of the gate, thinking that left would pay as the wind was forecast to back and to make use of any shifts. After about 1 minute a shift came through allowing us to tack accross pretty much the entire fleet - just about the best sight in the world! 4th around the windward mark, the leader being the pathfinder* from the gate start which is pretty incredible given he was the boat furthest right. He led from there all the way to the finish.

On the final beat we dropped to sixth but managed to overhaul the two boats in front in an exciting end to the race, 4th - a really great feeling.

Now scoring a 20th (discard), 18th and a 4th

*Pathfinder
A gate start is different to a line start. A boat is nominated as the PATHFINDER, and he must sail close-hauled on port tack and during a window of 2 minutes the fleet can start by crossing behind him on starboard tack.