From my cold dead hands…
The almost decade-long (9 year) dominance of the Thorpe brothers
over the NSW Moth State Championships was broken this
weekend.
I don’t know that I’m going to be able to hold onto it for that
long myself, but we’ll see how far we can go.
Northbridge proved to be a nasty nasty place to foil, with the
Seaforth zone providing plenty of character building opportunitites
throughout the weekend.
Friday saw a light E/NE breeze blowing. There was not enough breeze
to foil upwind, but the long reach into Sailor’s Bay provided just
enough foiling time to put enough distance on Les and Mark to take
the race.
The second race was not so kind, with less than 50m of foiling over
the two laps. Mark and Les battled it out at the front, with both
Ian Ward & Pete Harney being slippery without the useless
foil/keel drag. Chris Dey dragged his appendages around to beat me
for 5th place.
Saturday was more interesting, with a 25-30 knot SW/S forecast. The
hills around Northbridge sheltered the course so the gusts only
fluctuated from 0-20 knots across the course.
I led the first lap of the first race before capsizing at the
bottom mark and having Chris pass early on the upwind. Chris then
had a brain explosion, forgetting the course he designed and giving
the lead back to me at the middle mark. Les was 4th I think.
The next race provided some interesting lulls place changes. Les
led to the top mark followed by Chris. I got the inside running at
the middle mark and led around every other mark, only to lose a
half-leg lead when the pressure built from behind on the way to the
finish. Chris foiled around me to win by 5m. Bugger.
The next race I built up a handy buffer on Chris after some lucky
breaks through the zone.
But the other foilers couldn’t manage to knock off Les. After 5
races I’d only built up a 5-point margin with a drop, and there
were three races left to go.
Sunday morning didn’t look good.
The first race of the day started in a light Southerly, and within
5 minutes of the start it had turned into a hideously puffy and
shifty, light and shitty breeze. Les led, we caught up, the fleet
concertina-d around the track. Les ended up winning, just, from
Ian. Stevo beat me across. The rest of the fleet drifted over the
line about half an hour later.
So with two races to go, the margin was down to 2 points.
And then the breeze kicked a little… only a little. But it was
enough to foil.
And so we did… backwards and fowards… lots… around and around
Les and the other low-riders while the course was reset and the
racing got underway.
Les still led to the top mark, since upwind foiling just wasn’t
fast enough. Chris caught up on the first downwind and the four top
boats rounded the wing-mark together. Chris and I foiled away on
the next reach to take the places. Les and Ian forgot the middle
mark (another brain explosion) on the last lap and saw Pete and
Luka (and almost Phil) go through the gap.
Lucky for us the breeze didn’t die too much for the next race, and
it was more of the same.
So that was that. I ended up taking it away by about 6 points, from
Chris in 2nd and Les 1 point behind in 3rd.
The foiling fleet is building up in Sydney now, with Les and Ben
about to kit-up their HTs with foils from Thorpey. Hopefully
they’ll have them together for the BYRA marathon around Lion Island
in 2 weeks.
Or I could go to Coffs that weekend and sail a 12… and take the
new moth/12 for a run.
… Or I could race on Atomic in the winter series… too many
options…
