Here we go again
After the effort on Sunday I can safely assure you that 6 months
off 18 footer racing is not good preparation.
Being sick, rigging a new (ish) boat for the first time, and
sailing with a bowman we’ve never had onboard all adds up for an
‘educational’ day on the harbour.
The Rag proved to be a grunted up boat in top-end of big-rig
conditions (gusting to 20 at Ft. Denison). But having a grunted-up
boat with a few usability issues doesn’t explain for the 5 capsizes
- all had without the spinnaker up!
In the end we struggled around, finished the race, then almost
collapsed hauling the boat out of the water - last boat in. It’s
back to the doctors, then off to the gym to get back to the fitness
required. It’s going to be fun trying to balance losing weight for
my foiling Moth, and packing on strength for the 18…
hmmm…
The 18 experience followed on from a pretty uneventful (no offense
intended) race against the archimedean Moth Interclub fleet at
Balmoral. The foiler again proved to be incredibly fast compared to
the others on the figure-8 course. Hopefully things will become
more interesting as the others kit up with foils - whenever that’s
going to be.
And none of these activities had a positive impact on the flu that
I was carrying around late last week…. who would’ve
thought…
… and only another 6 months of the 18 footer season ahead,
hopefully we’ve had our fill of capsizes already…
