One of the many interesting tasks in race prep is sorting out the dehydrated food – 4 meals a day for 15 hard working sailors. As this involves a spreadsheet for calculations of calories, weights and volumes, Pete was entrusted to sort his out. If the calculations are wrong, there’ll be 14 hungry sailors looking for someone to blame. At least Pete can hide on he foredeck as no one wants to go up there…
Crew house is in full swing (well almost – last three hopefully in the air). Practice lined up today for spinnaker and fractional zero work, and a chance to head down the racecourse to the first mark. Practice has taken it’s toll on some boats (and aging bodies) – two boats lost masts, and one trimaran capsized. We’re all good as long as the repaired head is ok. Anyway the pic is for those that told us to bring home…
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZeVm_sIecA[/embedyt]
Final day of racing – no wind at dawn, but there was a slight build during the day until we had enough breeze to play in. Off we went with a great start and a solid first beat, and rounded the first mark in 3rd, which considering we’re one of the slowest rated boats in the 22 boat class, was quite something. A reach across to a pile of rocks, and then a spinnaker run down the island, and finally…
And the wind does blow…. Well up to 18 knots anyway. Long race day today – up around the islands and back through “bomb alley”. We got a bit jammed at the start, and were playing catch up as the fleet headed inshore to the first turning mark. About 10 miles of upwind work followed in a building breeze until we got to the rock we were turning around. Up went the biggest spinnaker, and then we fed through the…