Training, racing and training
The last week saw another load of time on the water… as
usual.
Nathan & Ben opened their NSWIS training session with
49er-guru-coach Emmett to all comers, so we joined in for a fairly
fresh Friday and Saturday.
The Friday session was productive, but we still struggled with a
speed problem. Anyone have a new 49er we can get hold of
quickly?
Euan raced in the overnight Flider’s Island Race on the VO70 Ichi
Bahn, so turned up on Saturday with hardly any sleep. The fresh
southerly and afternoon harbour traffic, along with Euan’s
sleep-deprived out-of-body handling meant we had plenty on.
Then Sunday rolled around, and with it the first scratch start of
the 18 Footer season. We started pretty poorly and rounded the top
mark of the SE course deep in the pack. Slowly we worked our way
back up into the field and finished 3rd. Well off Fiat who did a
horizon job on the fleet after rolling us off the line and racing
away into the distance.
Seve and the team on 7 almost lost another spinnaker pole in the
last bottom mark incident with us, with Euan setting them up on the
last gybe, coming in hot on starboard with room when 7 was slow in
their drop. I’m sure Dog
got some reasonable video of that incident for the post-race
debrief.
