WSC winter series race 5

With Dave and Darren indisposed this sunday we were down to the three owners, so it was great when Steve Dadd's crew from Rumrunner / Spindrift were similarly down to three and joined us underachievers on FarrOut. Our Steve and Daddsie had carried out similar training the night (morning?) before the race and so were both match fit.

A sunny and fresh morning started off nudging the 20 knots mark but tailed away during the race and 6 largish guys and a dirty hull is definately not what we wanted by the end of the race. Paul Elson was thrown right in at the deep end with the combined pit/trimming role and he coped superbly as it's quite busy in there. I volunteered to do the honours at the pointy bit in Dave's absence and was nothing but civil to the numerous skippers I had sitting behind me. My problem with the foredeck on a Laser 28 has always been going around the front of the mast during the tacks, the triangle formed by the jib sheets is quite small and the deck slopes away making it quite precarious. I favour the laying on your back with your feet in the anchor well approach. Once I'd cleared that up I'd say it went quite well with quite a few gybes and no wraps, thanks to our new friend Neil on "human guy". We felt sorry for Scoline when their gybe didn't  go as well....

The start was good but we really could have punched a hole in the side of Excaliber who should have gone up and OCS, ho hum probably have done the same thing myself but if you're reading this Joel the next transgression will be ours.

Nice to see a new boat out there John Stevens with a J80, interesting that it didn't really get away from us upwind - we'll see what happens when they get more used to it. We were very closely thinking about buying one of those before buying the Laser.

Anyway, not a bad performance considering our many handicaps and we managed to beat a couple of other boats on rating even though we were last over the water after Scoline retired.