scott.projectsomewhere

Yes, it’s a cliche.

The practice race was a blowout, with gusts over 30 knots on Portland Harbour today. Hardly conditions for Moth racing. Or practicing. The fresh conditions look set to continue into tomorrow, with the race committee aiming for an optimistic window between 11am and 3pm where the wind is forecast to dip below 30 knots for long enough to pull off a few races.

At this point the breeze looks set to continue through till about Thursday, so the MSL10 is going to get a workout, as is everything else, including me.

Given that there’s currently 98 boats registered for the event, the fleets have been split in two, with 6 races constituting a qualifying series, followed by 4 races in gold and silver fleets. It would’ve been nice to have 98 boats on one startline, but launching that many boats off one of the most Moth-unfriendly ramps is not realistic. Let alone the inevitable carnage that that big a fleet crossing upwind and downwind would cause. I’ve been lumped into Yellow for Sunday, with Graham Vials, Mat Belcher, Arnaud Psarofaghis and some 44 others. Certainly not an easy field, but then neither is the Red fleet.

I’ve called it quits on the boat work for today, but surely there’s more to be done that I haven’t yet got to. I quit recording what needed to be done a few days ago when the list started to grow and grow rather than get shorter. Not a good sign. The hanger at WPNSA is full of people tearing up sail numbers or fixing boats or generally taking up space inside instead of storing their precious boats out in the wind and rain like everyone else.

Simon Owen-Smith from Bladerider has been kept busy helping anyone and everyone, or keeping track of his rapidly disappearing tools and supplies. Adam, Alex and Sam have been busy measuring sails, with everyone pretty much ignoring the instruction to come to the event with pre-measured kit and paying the 20 quid penalty (make sure that doesn’t get to Stevo). Doink has been employed to get his hand dirty in epoxy (literally). And in typical Doink style firing up the angle grinder yesterday inside the metal hanger when the sail measurers were trying to concentrate at the other end. I’m sure the fun police would’ve put a stop to that caper…

So to quote another of John’s cliche’s from last year. The bullshit stops when the flag drops…

It goes on for another day at least.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 12:03 am and is filed under Moth, 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.