Bit of classic anyone?

We have a local OD derived from meter classes and the dragon, which have actually been gathered as an OD class only in the last decade.

I had crewed a couple of times, with a win in the lobster regatta, and helmed once on a heavy epoxy lined newer build with a bloody chaotic start.

This time I borrowed a near novice crew, who is good company and positive at least. We had some big convection showers blowing little squalls through the sound and making it pretty doubtful for spinnaker sets. When the sun went round and the clock came to five thirty, the wind started to follow the underlying gradient pattern.

The start shaped up to be a real clencher as the wind went down just a bit more: My watch was full of condensation so I had to rely on flags : gybe out when the one minute came down and then edge back in to the boats who were trying to get absolute best start,longest to the "pin" on our usual biased line from the shore to fixed bouy.

Had I known the seconds I would have had the best start of my helming career - well in a classic- my best ever start was in a tasar on an RS400 OD start..erm...yep, point perfect light winds start only in the wrong fleet!

Now the wind was still dying and I was the cheap ham slice falling out of the salad sandwich as I coaxed the boat into bad wind to get moving before tacking off. I could see wind on the RHS near the mark so given we had a little current agin us I went for it, with a painfully slow port tack to get over to a line with only maybe one tack again.

Up to the mark and I took two places back, but I could see a parked fleet infront of me on the actually reasonable leeward leg. Working on the white sails are better than baggy spinnakers, I went off on a wide , risky banana to a band of wind in the middle of the channel, between the two islands the majority of the fleet usedto get some wind on the beat. I saw them in bad tide, so this would be with me: whereas I could see set kites, filled with boats not moving against the land on my LHS. But the wind filled enough to take them away : now on a reach.

Now was time to cut my losses and get the bing on the stick while i did my best with the kite (POS with gaffer tape on it) This worked and I was able to get a good angle to the mark. I overtook rolf, who went low of me to hold his kite longer while I got speed to the final attack on the mark.

Then I had a long, impossible procession with the wind turning 90' gradually to my quarter making it slow. Rolf gave up behind me though as I built quarter of a mile on him in what was left of the head wind. Worse, the course wasn't shortened so I had the bloody whole way with everyone in front of me.

But on time, the winner was petter, with 9 minutes on the fleet, while I had seven minutes on the fleet in fifth or fourth position. So I actually did a good enough job to get back in and keep the boat moving.

I noted the shrouds are well slack, but the boat was pretty quick for the condition in general!

Classics like these are like sailing in slow motion for me! Even when it is blowing hard. But this gives me time to deconstruct my game a little and play a little chess.

I did enjoy it !