Tuesday Evenings: Race 2 [Posted by Steve on Wed 13th Apr 05]

After a good reach down the harbour with the small kite up, we headed up on to a beat and we were close to the X332 Squarmish and the other bigger boats. On the beat back up past Brownsea we picked off a few boats and with a good hoist of the kite we overtook another, and another at the drop. We were starting to hold our own against the bigger boats.

With a long fetch back up the harbour we had to max the speed and we tried everything -- it was working as we were leading by over a minute on handicap.

As we got close to the finish the tide was going out hard against us, so keeping out of the main channel essential. We were in and around the other classes and one of the smaller boats would not tack to let us back into deeper water. As I made her tack we came upright and hit the bottom. With some hard work from the crew we got off but had lost lots of time. We managed to get off and sail for the line, leaving us to wait in the bar to see if we had done enough.

Unfortunately we had not, as we were 30 seconds behind the Elan 31 Kudos on corrected time, frustratingly less then the time we spent on the bottom!

Oh well, a good race, good fun, and the 2nd place now brings us up to 2nd overall.

 

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