Another Day at the Office

Another Day At The Office

Well it was just one of those days when it makes racing seem pretty much like a job and not a pleasure. A combination of getting up an hour early, organising your gear and lunch, commuting on the motorway sets it up to be like this as it was with Activ8r.

It’s like a sodding day job on a Saturday with no quick beer with the lads after.


On board it’s a combination of hard work and sheer concentration. Worse, we have colleagues who we don’t like. Two dicks in this case who are come either apart or at the same time and try and slag me and get in my face/way. We had a good core with one of the tossers on the bow out of earshot, but we lacked a good trimmer and cabin topp. So in the quest for G1 we turn up someone who just completely takes over from the position I want to be in by being an arrogant shit. My own suggestion on tactics from the rail / main back fire on me immediately of course.

The no-beers , no social factor is what gets me. The pussy whipped suckers here are back home enjoying middag with their wee rugrats whilst over the puddle like nordsjø I know there will be barbeques and beers with plenty and if the kids are to be taken care off it will be running around the club house with the other brats!

However despite this unease or maybe partly because of the tension on the boat, we won. This cam as a nice perk up given that out tactician, let loose on boats direction, would have had us going wrong from the start, he didn’t have the 5min right on his own watch, we held kite too long, he doesn’t know the rules well enough and he took us into a hole and god only knows how we got out of it and managed to climb away from the three sixty two behind us. All the mistakes I’d have liked to been making!


The key things are
1) a reasonably competitive boat age , HC wise, but pref OOD.
2) new sails
3) a good bowman ( or your’s truly)
4) a helm who is easy to communicate with
5) most people with a laid back style and a sense of humour
6) no passengers /cruiser loosers
7) eye candy on cabin top / bow.
8) beers / social
9) ability to have responsibility as #2, man Friday
10) steering
11) Teaching some people trimming, bow, main etc

These are in no real order.

Once again I am in a position where I have to climb back up to actually getting where I want to be on a boat. The main issue is choice of helms. Perhaps I’d be better off with someone more sociable down at the local royal YC.


That is what experience is- learning from mistakes, building confidence by daring. “that quality you acquire the exact second after you most needed it “