Old Dutch in the Dark

Thursday 1 racing has become an all PY affair as for various reasons the two or three IRC boats available are racing with the W class for this series. I must admit having more boats racing together is fun. Last night's race was sailed in fairly light winds prompting Stephen to request the presence of a genoa. I was expecting another sail to arrive but he brought with him "Old Dutch", a sail that I'd forgot that we even possessed. It's probably 20+ years old and was made by Hagoort sails in Holland. This sail caused much hilarity as Adam the bowman had never had to tack a genoa before and ended up in some entanglement:

He was overzealous at one point dragging the cloth down the side of the boat and ended up "hiking" off the leeward guardwires holding onto a sheet and having to be rescued by Steve and Jack. A chaotic race that was probably too long for the conditions saw us sailing on into dark with lights on. The follow my leader instinct meant that most of the fleet went to the wrong windward mark, then the wrong gybe mark. After this we bailed out and changed course for the correct windward mark. There were 3 finishers, Crazeology and Evisa who had both sailed the right course and us who had doubled back. Here's the view we had of the committee boat as we came to the finish line:

The great thing was that with no traveller (new Harken one on order) and a 20+ year old sail we were excellently fast out of the start. Well done team for a funny and unusual race.