scott.projectsomewhere

Waz ‘the prince of darkness’ Rooklyn was in form yesterday, taking out the Sydney38 twilight regatta on the harbour with some friendly finishing tactics.

I was on board for the last two days, filling in in the ad-hoc crew for some pro who couldn’t make it.

Anyway, we scored a 4,3 on Wednesday night in a shifty southerly, then came out swinging in the shiftier breeze yesterday to take a 2,1 and the regatta win.

But it wasn’t all easy. Going into the last race we were 1 point down with 2 drops. Unfortunately for us, we got called OCS in the last race (a 2-lap sprint) and our regatta was almost over… but after restarting we got into phase and good pressure, and chipped away at the fleet to pin the port tackers and take a good lead around the top mark. All the rockstars on board must be good for something.

Anyway, again unfortunately for us, the boat infront of us on points was coming 2nd. If we finished ahead, we’d still lose on countback. So Mothy brings out the scoresheet and we dump on #2 on the uphill to drag the rest of the fleet up. We still were well ahead on the downwind… so back steps Seve for some last minute match racing.

Up goes the jib, in goes the main. We slow down and wait for them about 50m from the line. The poor guys didn’t quite know what hit them as we stuffed the chute and pinned them out of the line in a couple of nasty luffs.

As the other boat fell apart with a flogging chute and a half-raised jib, everyone on board went ballistic with the yell “WHAT THE %$^@ ARE YOU DOING?”… as we peel away, set the chute and take the win, with another boat between us and the confused and well pissed victim.

Yay. There’s the regatta win. Winners are grinners.

But somehow I don’t think they’ll be forgetting that one in a hurry.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 9:09 am and is filed under Sailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.