The weekend has been eventful…
The list of repairs to do on the 18 seems to grow every time we take it out, but there’s nothing surprising about that really. The boats have the usual wear and tear - and with Rollo on the course - the occasional collision.
It was our turn on Friday.
We went round the middle top mark, and gybed onto starboard soon after. Rollo had forgotton about the multiple top marks, and set his chute to try and get down to his. That put him on port - heading directly at us on starboard. Great. So we were all 3-stringing downwind in about 15 knots… then when it was obvious that they weren’t going to gybe, or even luff, we bore away hard and basically tangled poles… we shredded Rollo’s kite, but he broke our inner wing bar. And we capsized on top of each other. Nice.
Not a word was said as we pulled the boats apart and righted. I don’t know what he was thinking.
But Rollo has never been bought so many free beers in the club afterwards… hmmm…
Anyway, that meant Saturday was going to be a day of repairs at the factory. I went for a quick sail on the Moth in the morning, getting a full 5 minutes in with the repaired rudder box - before it broke again.
Luckily I made it back to shore without having to be towed. The boat now goes back into the shed while waiting for parts.
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Sunday’s light Easterly for the final race of the Australian 18′ Championship means we don’t have many repairs to do on the boat. We started the race well, but got bounced out of phase and lost touch with the leaders. A good middle downwind pulled us up to 4th, but we couldn’t do much more.
The youngish team of Micah, Jack and Drew on Macquarie Real Estate took home the trophy, fighting the series to the end with Yandoo, Fiat and 7.
With Rag finding form in the light airs, and Asko waiting in the wings, there’s a whole bunch of boats who are going to make this JJ Giltinan veeery interesting…
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It ’s also good to see Channel 7 making good on their sponsorship of the 18s, with the news helicopter hovering over the course for most of the race yesterday. Seve had to film 2 interviews as the series leader going into the final race - one as if he’d won the series, and one as if he’d lost. Unfortunately for him they had to run the latter.
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Apparently Channel 9’s owner James Packer was floating around on his power boat yesterday as well, watching the 18s as the 7 helicopter filmed. If only the stations would start of bit of a competitive bidding war…
