For the love of Robbie?

The title will become clearer further down the post.. don't worry I haven't gone soft, weird or had a brain swop...

So thats the first Solo open done for over 15 years! Unfortunately my dad bailed out and didn't sail.. just watched from the shore and critisised in proper "oppy-dad" styleee ahh them were the days!

Anyway got there and about 34 other Solo sailors rocked up as well, not bad... So got rigged there was a gentle F2 gusting F3 (maybe) and although the sun wasnt shining it was warm, great day for am Open Meeting.. So feeling keen but really not knowing how I would fair against old rivals and old-hands at Solo sailing(Richard Pye and Greg Irish) and a host of other damn good yachters of a number of generations I rigged, met my dad, grabbed a breakfast sausage bap and some coffee and went off to do battle...

Suprisingly the Solo fleet are a bunch of cowboys... 1 start, general recall, second start black-flag and a general recall (Chris Brown and John Coleman DSQ'd), 3rd start all clear.. bloody finally... I though Ent sailors were bad but nope even at a relatively "noddy" 1-day open the Solo sailors push it!

So first race was OK, took a while to get used to tacking without a crew and I for some reason couldn't settle with how much outhaul and kicker I needed, but I sailed OK-ish, got upto about 6th but lost a couple of places; wanted to do better (as always) but managed a reasonable 8th out of 35...

Grabbed lunch chatted with some old friends and my dad, took the piss out of Richard Pye because he wasn't gonna do the last race cus he was off to see Robbie Williams in concert :-) weirdo!! You don't risk being in the chocs just for a poncy ex-Take That singer...do you???

Anyway back out for the final two races.. we were joined by a "proper boat":

Yep the boyz were out training in the 18 foot skiff SP Systems...way cool. Such a shame there was so little wind, I think I saw 2 out of three high-trapezing at the most... great sight though!

So race 2...good start, crap first beat..picked up well, lost some more, gained a few more and ended up 13th... not happy starting to think this was a bad idea, hey ho I shall persevere... it was interesting watching the finish... Pye had won the first and was leading from Chris Brown by a few boat lengths, the last beatr was short maybe 5 mins long, Rich tightly covered chris...and lost it (by a foot or so).... you should only cover tightly if you know you have better boat handling skills than the other guy, and to be fair in fleet racing I always prefer to loose cover and focus on me, my boat, my speed....oh well..

Race 3, clean start on a very port biased line.. I had a shocker and had to do some hard work roll-tacking out to get clear wind... anyway, did my sail low and fast routine again and caught a fair few up on the downwind legs of the triangle and slowly worked my way upto 6th..happy with that...

So, a good day in the end had a good sail and it made a change to be in a singlehander.

1st Chris Brown (All hail Robbie)
2nd Rich Pye (For the love of Robbie)
3rd Mike Hobin (Whose Robbie?)
4th Greg Irish (Take That?)
....
8th Ant Clay

Thanks dad for the lend of the boat and sorry I didn't do better...