Any Publicity Is Good Publicity !

Yes! It was the day where Gooby and I were supposed to prove ourselves as capable young sailors, that our reputation till yesterday had portrayed us!

With the pressure on after Greig and Benny's performance last weekend, Iain Kyle and I were taking in every word of wisdom given from Greig before leaving the beach for the 4 lap E/SE 5 to 10 knot race right in the middle of the harbour. The sun was shining the cameras were rolling and we were ready.

after an ordinary start and a bit of a struggle up the first beat we rounded a crowded top mark with the whole fleet in about 10th position.

Gaining one boat on the first down wind a comment was made by Gooby that "This is our race boys" Meaning that in the shifty and patchy conditions there were massive gains and losses that could be made or lost and if we played it smart we could really do well.

Up the second work we got our heads out of the boat and simply sailed towards pressure and always on the lifting take which took us to the top right hand side of the course screaming in to the top mark on starboard in a top 10 position.

Once again the top mark was heavily crowded. On approach, there was good pressure on the inside and with Therlow Fisher Lawyers advanced and below us. A gybe set decission was called.

As we rounded the mark Therlow Fisher decided to gybe set aswell. As soon as I saw them turning I made the decission to push our boat through the gybe a little harder to try and get us above Them on the exit of gybe set. This turned out to be a manouver that was to much for us to handle and we ended up in the drink. My thoughts on why we capsized are....

1. trying to gybe set when the boat was going to slow and far to loaded up
2. Pushing it to high on the exit to try and be above another boat
3. Crew work
4. Communication and decission making

The Alternatives ( From Dave's perspective)

1. We could of done a safe straight set. But I thought it was the wrong way to go.

2. We could of done a slower gybe set and been stuck behind or below Therlow Fisher Lawyers and potentially rolled by another boat

The argument is that maybe it was smarter to take one of the two options above and try and make gains at different parts of the race. However we are racing and when faced with such a situation to either take shit for a while and play it safe or go hard and have a real go at it. At that moment my mind was all about racing rather then being conservative, especially in the light conditions.

In heindsight of course we would take option 1 or 2 because the rest of the race after the capsize was sailed really well and we pulled back from second last all the way up to 15th passing 7 boats in the last lap and a half.

However if we had the time and opportunity to put some training hours in. I'm sure a simple manouver like a tight gybe set would be easy.

All this drama made for a fantastic photo that was today posted with a short article in the Daily Telegraph and even though the boat might be on its way to being up side down with gooby launching himself over the wing and myself clining on with frustration. I follow the statement of Dick Smith that "Any Publicity is Good Publicity"

Lets hope Clive agrees!!!! :)

Oh boy! this 18ft stuff is sure a challenge but we are having fun and one day I'm hoping that it will come together for us. ;)