Last Saturday dawned with a great breeze to go take the Moth out and have a semi-blast… unfortunately by the time I was actually awake the breeze had waned considerably!
I went up to Draycote to watch my eldest son sailing in an RS Tera and was so proud that he is coming on so well, really enjoying being out on the water and starting to find his “groove”… he’s even started to get a competitive spirit about him and in the next few weeks he’s gonna start race training which is awesome!
So, after deciding not to take the Moth out, I ummed and errred as to whether to go out in my Dad’s Solo and do the last two races of the Solo Open Meeting… with 20 mins before the start to go I decided what the hell… borrowed a sail, borrowed a wetsuit and lifejacket and went out bare-foot solo sailing in a F2 shifty-as-hell breeze.
So with hastily purchased tuna bap in hand I hit the water, practicing some boat handling and generally getting my smeg-together..
Wind was very patchy, and about a minute or so before the start of the 2nd race, I noticed a few gusts coming down the left side of the course. The line was fairly square so I legged it over to the pin end, had good boat speed off the line and went of a couple of hundred yards in breeze before tacking on top of the rest of the fleet, looked good for a while, with the breeze lifting on port tack, but as it started to die half way up the beat the wind veered and I dropped back into just inside the top 10. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful, had some decent boat speed downwind and made a special effort to go very deep on both the reaches and the runs to try to break into the lead pack.. By the end of Race two I’d managed to just eek myself into 6th place.
So, no time to go back in for a drink or anything.. Race 2 started in pretty much the same kind of breeze, with the lulls being depressingly lighter…I was feeling fairly confident so decided to make a statement and do a port tack flyer… left the final run too late and was around 5 secs late to the start, but pin was favoured so that limited the damage of my ineptitude! This race seemed harder going than the last, did some good moved both upwind and downwind and sailed pretty aggressively, but something always seemed to limit the effectiveness of my moves, gusts from the other side of the fleet, scuffles at the windward mark… and leeward mark around rule interpretations (and idiots).. So after lots of hard work for very little gain I ended up 8th in race 3.
It was a good couple of events, great to stretch the tactical mind a bit and 9th overall out of 22 and only doing 2 out of 3 races weren’t too bad…
The full report and results are here: Draycote Solo Open Meeting
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