scott.projectsomewhere

I said the same thing after last year’s JJ performance from Fiat.

This year, the bar has been raised. A lot.

Last time around, Fiat won with a race to spare and 15 odd points on the scorecard. This time 7 dominated, taking it with a race to spare and only 9 points. Even after getting home at 9.30 AM from the night-before’s celebrations and sailing practically blind drunk, the 7 team almost won the final race.

There’s been a hell of a lot of talk about professionalism, money, coaches, training etc etc. But you can’t take anything away from the guys. They’ve sailed incredibly well. Like I said yesterday, few people can remember such a dominating performance - especially considering the strength of the fleet.

The attention to detail in the 7 program was phenomenal. From having separate foil bags to stop their foils being scratched as the boat was carried into the water, to drilling out the centre of the cap-shroud bolt at the topmast to save weight, to spending big dollars to re-fair their foils, there has been nothing missed, no stone left unturned.

They’ve used their coach and mentor to great effect. They’ve used the defending champions on Fiat (and to some extent Macquarie) to develop rigs, then cut them loose when they’d put themselves far enough ahead. They’ve formed training race groups with boats that wouldn’t threaten them. They’ve been ruthless.

The 7 boys have sailed together as a team for close to 9 years, but have raised the bar yet again in only their second year together on the 18. Their sailing was exceptional. At no time were they out of the top 5 around any mark in any race. Their acceleration off the startline and their speed build out of tacks was unbelievable. Their sets, gybes and drops were just a whole magnitude better than anyone else.

They truly do deserve to be the JJ Champions for 2008.

Even discounting their extraordinary support, the spooners are way out in front. And deserve to be so.

But where does that leave everyone else?

There’s the general funk that disappointment leaves for the rest of the fleet, leading to a lot of soul-searching, a lot of reflection. After fighting it out at the top of the pack for 7 seasons, Hugh, Paul and Niall on Asko are pulling the pin. They’ve always been there. They’ve been teasingly close. It will be sad to see the fleet without the Asko crew. They’re good solid competitors and just nice guys.

For us on the Rag it has been an up and down year. We’ve finally won some races, which put a good spin on the end of an otherwise ordinary JJ. We beat Beasho on Club Marine by a couple of points in the end to claim 5th spot. But at that point it’s all academic. Like Linksy said afterwards, it’s first or it’s nothing. Unless I get eased by John I will be around for another shot, maybe in a new Rag for ‘09. Pete might be back on the front, despite being stalked by others already. Good people are hard to find.

The guys on Fiat are reassessing where things are at, on a lot of levels. Cocko will be working things out, and there’s talk of Nath spending more time with his young family. They’ve said they’ll be happy just Sunday sailing, but I can’t see that being enough for them when it comes to the crunch.

On Macquarie, Jack and Drew are talking about time out. Micah wants to roll in for another year.

Kinder Caring is going from strength to strength, and will surely be back together.

Then there’s the rock stars like Nathan Outteridge who are seriously talking about putting teams together, perfect for the low-year in their Olympic cycle.

The League is sending a bunch of containers overseas this year. There’s 8 boats going to the Anzac regatta in NZ. There’s also plenty of people talking seriously about San Fran and Bandol.

There’s also a murmur around the park of the JJ being held overseas in future years. That’ll sort-of ruin our season and make it tough to campaign all year. It’s been verbally agreed to, but I can see plenty of unhappy campers in the boat park complaining about that. It is our trophy after all.

A couple of races to go and then it’s curtains for season number 4 at the Leage.

Next up… the new Moth.

I’ll hold that maxim as true at this point… after taking out race 6 of the JJ on the Rag.

At least it adds a bit of an upside onto an otherwise generally disappointing regatta.

We started ok this time, boxed in by Beasho on Club Marine, we reached out on the pin end for clear air while a bunch of boats went back to restart. Up the work we were looking great, a knock later we were in about 4th, where we turned and headed back for the first of 4 downwind legs.

Beasho and Seve tangled at the bottom gate and we gybed out to take the lead. We lost the lead again, then gained, then lost, then gained. Finally we put a bit of time into the spooners and sort-of managed them and minimized risk to stay between them and the finish and score a 16 second win.

Phew.

But that was it for the regatta. 7’s silver spooners have taken it out in pretty emphatic fashion. Nobody seems able to recall such a dominating performance.

Whether they can stand up in time for today’s final heat remains to be seen, but it doesn’t really matter. Even the bookie had taken them out of the field after about heat 2.

I’m running out of adjectives to describe our regatta. It just hasn’t been our week.

Yesterday was a bit more of the same. After coming off a bad race on Wednesday, we were ready to do better. But then we got a bit too eager in the last 10 seconds and our pole went over the line.

By the time the flags and our recall number went up, and we found a gap to come back to the line, we were miles behind.

But we raced well for the first half of the race, and gained back about 18 boats in the first 2 legs. We then swapped places with Beasho on Club Marine over the next bunch of legs, and stayed in about 10th spot - where we finished.

At the other end, 7 were boxed out at the start, tacked and gybed around, reached with 3-strings under the fleet and finding a gap with 10 seconds to go, came through at full pace to launch a couple of boatlengths ahead after a couple of boatlengths of sailing. They tacked and crossed the fleet and then weren’t headed all day.

That’s it. Game over. Barring an absolute disaster in both of the next 2 races, 7 has it tied up. They’ve done an awesome job. They’ve sailed brilliantly. They deserve it.

I can’t say the vibe in the park is exactly jubilant at this point, but it seems everyone has begrudingly accepted that it is how it is. Everyone got to drown their sorrows at the Rag last night, so there’ll be a few sore heads today, and maybe a bunch of new kit coming our way next season.

Bring on the weekend.

Not such a great couple of days for the Rag team. We dodged a couple of bullets in Tuesday’s light and flukey Easterly to score a 6th, which could’ve been 4th, which could’ve been 11th.

Then Wednesday’s race was one of the most disappointing. We actually started well on the NE course, and were vying with 7 up the first work, only to stick too hard to the left and lose a bunch of boats on the right hand side. We then put the choke on and got eaten up by another 5 or so boats around the track to score an 11th. Not pretty. Actually pretty ordinary.

At the other end of the fleet, Fiat are slowly closing the gap on 7, scoring another win. They still need another boat in the mix to catch up on that 6th place they scored in race 2. I doubt 7 will be playing silly buggers and dumping on Fiat so hard they are forced to split tacks. Dog would’ve been cringing when they forced separation rather than just shepherding the competition up the course and minimizing risk.

We’re lying 7th overall with 3 races to go. C-Tech is tied for points, and Macquarie will be gaining fast when they drop their 30th place DNF. Time to pull something out of the bag…

Maybe we should go little rig…

Ben and I picked up the new Moths this morning. I’ve opened the box and checked out all the shiny carbon bits. All very sexy.

Now to lock it in the garage and concentrate on the 18.

I thought about posting photos, but then I couldn’t be bothered to pixellate them all…

And the 18s don’t race on Sunday 9th of March… the inagural Sydney Superboat Grand Prix is taking over the Harbour for the day with an exclusion zone from Farm Cove to Rose Bay.

But then again if we could manage racing on Australia Day, how hard could it be to deal with these guys doing a couple of hundred km/h.

My hate of powerboats gets stronger by the day.