Long Day

Well today’s racing was certainly a learning experience and a long day.

The boat was all set up, ready to go with our number 1 rig up and a nice 10/14 knot NE blowing. Perfect conditions for the first race of the season.

We were racked up towards the boat with 1 min to go and things were shaping up nicely. The gun went and we were first off the line with max pace and above the fleet, nice and clean. As expected we knocked down as we got towards Bradleys. However we managed to cross most of the fleet except for Channel 7 and the Rag. Things were looking great!!!!

As we progressed up the first work we managed to hold our position. However due to our handicap being quite low we were required to sail a longer work and half the fleet got back in front of us once we rounded the top mark. "Really Frustrating". All that hard work for nothing!

We were now with the pack on the downwind at times getting covered, which forced us to sail quite high into Rose Bay in order to get clear, which ended with us losing out a fair bit.

Up the second beat, we had our work cut out in order to catch all these boats that got to sail a shorter course.

We slowly started to climb our way back through the pack and by the time we got to the top we were back up there mixing it up with the pack. Yet once again we had to sail that extra 150 meters to go around our lonely little blue mark, whilst what felt like everyone else was going around the red one. "I Hate Handicap Sailing".

Yet again we were out the back and this time it was looking pretty hard to catch up. By the last up wind we managed to catch back up a little but yet again we were sailing off into the distance to our little blue mark.

By the end of the race we ended up finishing a not so good 16th.

We would certainly prefer some normal races. However I'm sure our handicap will be a lot higher after this weekend, so maybe we'll be the ones laughing when we are cruzing around that shorter course. ;)

We can only get better from here!

Next weekend is the Life Members Trophy race and with a few rig set up things to sort out some hight and speed issues things should be looking better.