Year out no more

   The thin.g about being the type of sailor who wins the first keel boat race they ever helmed is ....you always get asked back....2015 is going to be a sailling year

so we went out in the schmelges, I drove two hours to get there with the sun baking down on the windscreen all the way.

I dodged as much of the rigging up of the boat as possible - it was not the owner so it was the usual over domineering twit who is otherwise very likeable, and i had enough anyway of raising the main and stuff . Also we had a parrttimer who is a bit of a waste of space, not just a few pages back in the book, but actually a whole bookshelf he needs to get up to speed!

So the start was a broad reach for the round the nav marks race and our hoist was woefully late and of course we had both a nasty wine glass AND the tack line strangled round the 'prodder. There had been some mess up with how it was rigged and it just was nasty, with the next gust and the kite nasty we just broached and the kite almost went fishing I just leapt over and got the damn end of it and para/regimented it into the boat while tweedel dum and dee took time to think about what they were doing. After the recovery we elected to have a bit of a cruise and even then we took a bit of a wrong gybe angle. You know you are in a twenty four foot boat when you dont have the kite up, it is qite pedestrian.  Coming out the mark I could see we were going to go up the rump of the boat infront and reckoned we would not sail high of her, right enough we had to crash tack and that is when I probably got my nasty big bruise on my inner leg.

Things then got progressively better however. I thought we could only loose a mast to make it any worse to be honest. A tough beat ensued up to the start line. This was good , I think we made up half the fleet by just hiking hard and taking height when we could.

We had atleast re/rigged the kite for a hoist so that went ok once we got up to the mark near the start area. Up went the old rag and we started gaining on the fleet, although the other melges was a good part of the leg ahead of us back to the same nav mark. Some planing  ensued which apparently the other guys hadnt had. Not superr fast , peak maybe 12knts boat speed. This time we kept the gybe angles nice and soaked down towards the mark, for a 'fetch' over to the finish nearer the other clubs house.  Due to some decent sailing and some wind filling in, we made up at least 600 yards on the other melges which was something at least. We then had a one tack beat back to the start, which began to get a little cold.

I was home alone that week so it was cool to come back and have a beer and contemplate the race and the team which had been flung togehter witho0ut the owner on board. 
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