Plastic fantastic
You’ve gotta love the people who throw their trash into Sydney Harbour… We must’ve picked up a plastic bag after the first lap of today’s race, then towed it around the course for the next two laps… losing 10 boats in the process.
Not a good thing to do when you’ve had a good showing in the races so far.
With a 3,1,7,14 scoreline, we’ve dropped to 4th. A good few points back off the leaders, and carrying a hefty drop.
Considering the series winner needs to have about 18 points for their best 6 races, we’ve got some work to do now.
So…
Tuesday’s race was a light gradient ENE breeze, with everyone going big rig.
We had an awful start, 2nd row and apparently 30 seconds late. From there we sailed fast to get back into the top 10 at the top mark. The right-hand pressure on the tight reach around Shark Is meant a few boats were heading for the bricks. At one stage we were a boatlength off the rocks, hanging onto our trapeze loops with all the sails flogging just hoping to get around the mark.
Herman on Appliancesonline.com.au raced away to the lead, overtaking Seve on the tight reaches - til Seve worked out he needed to ease the main on the tight reach. Fiat and these two fought it out at the front, with Fiat gaining the right hand advantage and the lead at the end of the last work.
For us, not so good. We battled around with Howie and Macquarie, losing touch on Asko and Rag, and eventually losing out to Howie on the tight run home. Fat bastards.
So today was going to be better. We were going to get off the line well and put in a better show… and we did - get off the line at least. We started well and were smoking up the work. We got out of phase a little at the top and lost 3 or 4 places, but still rounded in the top 6. At the bottom we were 5th.
But then we caught something.
Well we didn’t realise we had anything, it was just that everyone started going faster than us. Even boats sailing in our gas were going the same speed. Boats behind were getting closer and starting to cross us, the boats ahead were just moving away. Bugger.
In the end 10 boats sailed through us on the next few legs… damn frustrating.
Oh well. Tomorrow is another day.
