Middle Nene 2006

Well at least it wasn't snowing hey....

It was a grat turn-out seeing as the weather has been pretty lousy, but the sun was shining (for at least an hour) and 17 Enterprises made their way to Middle Nene (Thrapston)... for the seconf year running I gotta kinda lost on the way there, but this time not soo dramatically, and I managed to rock up to the sailing club about on time....but James had beat me there as usuall and pretty much rigged the boat....a wooden boat...not our plastic fantastic, nope thats still at Estaugh's Doh! Still it was nice to see the old girl again, James''s Bro (Paul) lent us the boat and it was the first Ent that me and James sailed in together about 5 or 6 years ago..... So onwards..

Bacon Sarnies & coffee were ordered, not quite "king coconut's and pizza by the pool side" but it'll do...

Rang Steve from P&B 'cus he hadn't materialised with Chessie.. and found out that he'd ducked the open to go on a stag weekend (his brothers) in Prague...git..sounded like he was OK and had had a top time...just rockin' up to breakfast when I rang him at 10:30!

So race 1... line was set well, a straightforward course and a force 2 and wasn't even too cold..yet... we had an OK start, sailed a decent enuff beat with the wind shifting a fair bit... looking ok in the top 3 or so.. then Anne Jackson popped up from the left from no-where after looking like she'd had a shocker of a first bear..bummer... so we rounded windward mark happy enough.. had a good few laps, got up to 2nd place chasing Anne.. then we got into a bit of wind-shift induced tactics and ended up being bogged down with the Bevans..Anne got a way out of reach.. still happy (ish) with third.. then up the last bloody beat the Scutts managed to get a bit of extra pressure and took us both..straight round us and into 2nd...Very annoying... I guess thats pond sailing for you...

Lunch... sat in the relative warmth with a cup of tea and a pastie...(we got the last 2!) that was nice enough, had a chat with James about life etc..we don't do much of that anymore so that was cool.. then, darker clouds rolling in, temperature starting to drop..so must be time for race 2!

Race2
So pretty much more of the same...a little more breeze at time, i.e. bot our fat arses were over the side for a few seconds! Again, average start, sailed well got into second place, Anne still first, the Bevans and Scutts not really far enuff behind... held onto 2nd and happy with that result.. feelin' that things are going ok...

Note to all.. BTW this was all done sailing James's Bro's boat.. a wooden Ent, not the newest sails and withought our carbon jib sticks... to be fair, I think the boat roll-tacked better(evidence being a damn sight less water in the bottom after each race!), handled ok, was probably slightly slower on the plane, but we were surrounded by other wooden Ents for once so that wasnt an issue.. but otherwise she sailed well, handled fine and wasn't much different to our lovely FRP plastic fantastic..)

Race 3 - To be fair I'm sure something intersting must of happened, but you see I helm, I need to get a flow of info into my brain, wind, waves, boats, marks, James, tactics etc etc so I dont actually remember thoings (long term) from the race..sorry... oh yeh do remmeber that Martin Davies and his wife Laurence had a bit of an argument in the 1st racing causing him to retire :-)

"..Never sail (or rather race) with your wife unless next season you want to be racing through the divorce courts.."

Anyway.. race thre, Anne had already won with 2 bullets, we basically needed to keep the Bevans out of the top two and the Scutts behind us. Ath the freakin' windward mark they were 1st and 2nd..grrr this was gonna be tricky... the race then passed far too quickly, breeze up and down and although there was a fair bit of place changing we could never get into a position to really effect what was happening in the top three.. Anne Jackson let us down this race by not trying hard-enough and it ended up with Bevans 1st Scutts 2nd and us 3rd..nightmare..so despite our worst result being 4th....we ende dup 4th...

We are not having any luck with final positions at the moment.....

1st Anne Jackson & Alan
2nd The Bevans
3rd The Scutts
4th Me and James

So that was our 1st UK sail of 2006... to be fair the result was dissapointing, but the sail was pretty good and overall we didint actually sail too bad, fairly well gelled together just not on the pace enuff as far as the finish line... see you at the end of the month @ Bewl Valley..