JJ IS ON!!!!

Well today Craig Riss and I got the mighty CST together and in working order for the invitation race of the 2009 JJ Giltinan.

For us, the race was more a shake down sail and working out how everything was going to work out on the boat.

The fleet decided to go with the little rigs in the up and down S/SE cloudy day and overall we had a pretty good race finishing 10th over the line. Our crew work as expected was fantastic and our strategy and tactics was pretty switched on. With Fez and Ris on the boat nothing was a problem and everything went really smooth. We still think we can make the boat go alot faster cause at times during the race it felt really bound up and hard to get going but we've done a little more tweaking to the little rig which should be sweet for tomorrow should the forecast be true.

It's all on tomorrow we have a few more things to fix up on the boat and we will be out there early to make sure we are all sorted for a good clean start and race.

I really want to get up there and mix it up with the top guys and if I steer the boat well and push the tiller HARD ENOUGH in the tacks im sure we can.

Make sure you all come down and out on the spectator ferry to check it all out.

TWILGIHT

It's all on tonight for the twilight race. We have Myself Kyle and Stu Pollard filling in for GOOBY AKA "Traitor" hahahha Na he's aight ;). It's going to be spoking this afternoon and the boat should be ready to go if get the wing net fixed up.

If all goes well we should have a good race as it is a handicap race tonight and we have 8 min that will keep us up in the mix of things.

I still have a lot of tweaking actually lets just call it fixing to do on the boat to make it ready for the rock stars to step on board. The first sail with Ferris and Rissol is this wednesday afternoon and hopefully there are a few other teams out that we can line up against to get an idea on our boat speed cause at the moment our big rig is performing pretty ordinary. However we havn't really had any super subs on the boat for a while.

I really want to go well in the JJ and I got a feeling im gonna be learning a fair bit in the coming 2 weeks

Back on!

Yes its true over the Christmas holiday period the blog has been a little bit quite as well as the 18's racing. However it's all "BACK ON" now with CST Composites currently taking part in the Australian Championships placing 8th last weekend in the first race of the series.

After having Iain and Kyle having to drop out of the JJ in Febuary I have been hunting around for our usual Super Subs and came up with the goods CST's crew for the JJ are as follows,

Skipper: Dave
Sheet: Ferris
Bow: Rissol

Two former champions of the JJ and 18's. Our first sail together will be on the Australia day long weekend followed by another practice sail then a whole heap of boat work that I'm sure I'm going to be busy with and then it will be straight into the regatta.

Hopefully we can go well!

BOOST

Todays race was the funest races I have sailed in for a long time!

The 15/20 knot SE set most of the fleet including us up with the little rig with us knowing that ours is pretty quick in a straight line and therefore feeling confident. With Sammy and Bill Walker along with Pete, Kate and kyles mate (our photographer) out on the spectator ferry the pressure was on us to sail well and get a good result.

After a general recall which enabled us to line up and test our speed. We were certainly quick and ready to nail the start and first work.

We decided to rack up middle of the line towards the pin as the left hand side up to Nelsons point was where we wanted to be and where we thought the race to the top mark would be won.

Our start was clean and we were smoking along with Active Air above us and Pure Blonde below.

At the top mark we rounded in third position, however everyone was very close together.

The first spiniker run was a smoker! Where we flu down the harbour to the bottom mark. Unfortunately it all came unstuck when we went for the gybe drop gybe around the bottom mark in some serious pressure, I stuffed up the turn and we put it in the drink.

Not to worry cause five other boats had done the same!

Once we got it up we were a little bit angry with a few heated words but we got on with the job and started our fight back along with Active Air who were the leaders and had also put it in the drink.

By the end of the race after sailing really well we finished 9th which isn't to bad but it would of been good to see what we could of done if we had of kept it upright.

Anyway our little rig with the fine tunning we have done to it is a ripper along with our little yellow spin, so we are really enjoying the fresh conditions and hopefully from now on we can keep getting results in the top ten.

Thanks heaps to Sam and Bill and everyone one else who came and watched I think it made us sail heaps better.

Remember to watch Sail Cam TV for all the footage of the race.