Thursday race - encouraging

After a couple of cancelled races and the Olympic circus rapidly descending on us, boats and crews were eager to get out for the thursday evening race 7th in the series. FarrOut was fully crewed with the usual suspects and leaping for the 10 odd knots of breeze and no rain.

Pre-race Darren had actually asked me if we were still going racing as it wasn't raining or blowing a gale.

So we were a little late on the start and had to duck one boat and tack away from another port/starboard on the first beat. The boat that we ducked, we were able to get on the next tack and then slam dunked them, clever but not very clever in a Laser 28 which won't point for toffee. This all meant that a gap had opened up and us playing follow my leader.

The next leg was a shy reach, perfect for the "Sponge Bob" ayso but sailing underneath the 4ksb boats of the V class limited our catch up potential.

The run on the next leg involved a move worthy of having 6 crew who knew what they were doing:

1. Headsail up stbd tack.
2. Ayso leeward drop. Helmsman heads up.
3. Spinnaker gear round for port pole. clip on to sym kite. Tack line off prod, becoming pole downhaul.
4. Gybe at mark.
5. Pole up port side. Tweeker down. Pre-feed guy.
6. Hoist. Two bags back. Away we go....phew.

The new longer pole and the S2 kite were powerful for us in these conditions and we were gaining on all of the fleet. Encouraging point No. 1

A slick drop and heading up at the leeward mark saw us chasing Folio (MGC27) to the line, ready to go around again. It was not to be as the race officer was going to finish us just when we'd stepped up to the game. On this last beat though we were catching Folio so I think the bit more pre-bend I put in the rig and the weight on the rail did us favours. With some breeze calling and luffing for height thrown in. Encouraging point No. 2

We weren't ready to go and tie up just yet so we went for a little ayso ride and some gybing practice with Darren timing the gybes. We got them down to under 10 seconds. Encouraging point No. 3

Upwind back to port we played with the headsail car positions. Reckon that we sailed the whole race with the top of the sail twisted out, not good in moderate airs! Car position marked so we won't do that again. Encouraging point No. 4

Fifth in PY and 2nd under IRC tandem score.