Back to it
After what feels like a long break, it was back to racing at the 18s yesterday. NE seabreeze, 20+ knots at times and a big run out tide making for some nice waves to bounce over downhill. Can’t complain about that.
The Rag had a good race. After having Asko bounce out of the start below us, and 7 roll over a couple of hundred metres down the track, we tacked out into a clear lane and started working our way up through the fleet. After repeatedly running into chop off the back of the American’s spectator boat (not a good idea to be in the middle of the course if you’re expecting to be given a boat to sail guys)…. we rounded in 5th, just ahead of Club Marine and Macquarie.
After misjudging the layline around Shark, we were 6th, then 5th again at the top. Then when Asko crashed into a wave downwind whilst in the lead, we went into 4th.
Beasho on Club Marine kept coming back to us, but we held him off over the last lap and made gains on Smeg and Yandoo up in front. Yet another moron in a cruising yacht on the layline put us back a couple of boatlengths… which could’ve made a whole load of difference… but then we gained on Woody with an early gybe, then went on his line around Shark and gained little by little towards the line (it helps to be 3-stringing when Woody is sitting on the wing)… In the last ragging of the chute to make the finish, we rolled over Yandoo (with our sponsor and owner of the Rag on the bow) to take 3rd place.
So that’s another good finish in the bank. It could’ve been worse… it could’ve been better.
Fiat ended the day early when their 3kg lighter centreboard snapped before the start… our friendly sailmaker ferried Nath in to pick up their old one from shore… but they’d done too good a job on the casing and couldn’t get the old board in in time for the start. 7 would’ve been watching that situation apprehensively… as their new board would be ticking away towards it’s expiry date (after Asko broke their same-spec board on Friday night).
Plenty of good photos to come later in the week.
In the meantime I’ve uploaded the video footage from the VX40 test day against the 18′ and Tornado up to Youtube.
New Moth ETA… end of the month…
