Fast & Furious
Written by Stevie Morrison | 08 August 2011
Windy Weymouth. Well it often is and wow today it was. This is the second time i am writing this as i have had some technical issues! But anyway you guys are worth it.
Well today was a frustrating day, not a bad day but a day of missed opportunity. We sailed on the Nothe course which was right under the shore, shifty & really quite funky. The day started well with us in a very tight race. Due to the snakes and ladders nature of the short course with 4 laps per race there was lots of place changing. Great fun of course, all the better when, as we did slide through to 2nd on the last run. This was the highlight of the day ;).
Next race and again we were rite in the mix, we have good pace, solid starts and are feeling confident which is always a good mix. However maybe we were a touch to confident as we really attacked the course and whilst in 5th went for a tricky gybe drop at the bottom of the course to gain a tactical advantage. However in the gusts we missed judged it and ended up really wet! The decency! With only one lap remaining there was sadly little time to catch up so we dropped in a 16th.
The final race of the day and the wind was now touching 25knots. Again we started well positioned ourselves to the left of the fleet and got to the top mark 1st.The mark was positioned about 15m from the harbour wall so you couldn't see the wind coming. It felt a bit like racing blindfolded at the top end of the course. We bore off but were hit by a big gust at that moment. A picture perfect nose dive followed, picture perfect but not race perfect!! The Spanish in 2nd went in as well. We pulled the boat upright to see we were 250m behind the back of the fleet. 1st to last in a split second. This time however we had 3 laps left.
In somewhat of a epic race we fought back well still racing the shifts not just getting the boat round as others were, we pulled through to 6th. So good salvage. We are looking forward to tomorrow but right now Ben is flat out in bed after smashing his back in the capsize. The mast is down and the pole out of the boat as both have small cracks! A big day to say the least!
But we are fast and just need to be a little less furious...