Celia was the best choice for driver so that Stephen could do the bow and Nick on mainsheet. Quite a good solution to our crew positioning problem but it did mean that Stephen and I had a foredeck / pit domestic argument - just like the old days; ho ho "shut up at the back!".
A new boat for us to play with, Mark & Rima Bugler's new Saskia VII is a J97 - the ex-"Jika-Jika" so nothing to live upto there then. Wildfire the 36.7 was out, The Commodore's Arcsine, Arcona 370 and us made up the IRC and "Fast" class. Swenn and Loo-lah were the only ones out in the slow class.
A mid line start for us, in front of and out of the way of the bigger boats. Our speed was good up the first beat as well even though we were all very rusty. A great course for us was a triangle with two 110-120 deg apparent legs which we ayso'd with nice gybes at the corner.
The problem came as we arrived at the windward mark for the second time and there was a big bang from the rig. We took the foot off the pedal and dropped the headsail, the leeward shrouds looked slack but nothing was too untoward. On checking after the race we'd lost a bit of rig tension so can only summise that the mast foot had been hanging up on the extrusion. As there was no real problem we carried on with the race but we'd lost maybe four or five minutes.
We went down the deep run under the symmetric kite and nearly caught up with Arcsine at the bottom. The wind had started to puff up a bit and 3 handed was probably a bit much for them.
We got a 3rd under IRC and a third under NHC. It was won by Wildfire IRC and Saskia VII NHC.
Roll on next week. But first of all I'm going to have to re-tune the rig, and it was all nicely taped up as well!
Too busy for photos in the pit so here's a nice one of a little issue in the yard....
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