Race Number One

Race number one turned out to be a very long 150Nm with super light wind and a lot of local knowledge.

A late course change the morning of the race and then a shortened course at the started made for a high stress start to the race. We were working out the course as we went into the starting sequence, which is never fast... So we ended up in bad breeze going over the line and had to tack away. We had a productive beat before bearing away and hoisting the lager kite, The Whomper. We had a great long reach up the inside of Ile de Gouix, weaving our way up through the fleet and getting into a respectable position. Then we had an error, pushing hard and trying to beat the French guys in their own backyard we went to close to the Island and touched the bottom. Very nerve racking but no damage, we carried on and got back into the race.

Then the wind stopped, we had a short down wind and a lead group managed to open a gap, we were just behind in a small group, the rest of that day was spent looking for wind on the horizon and keeping very still trying to get to the top end of the course at the Glens.

We turned the corner around midnight and started upwind with a little more breeze. It was a light but pleasant morning keeping our strong position. We then reach plateau de Four and took the corner very wide after our close touch early on and allow a small group to sneak inside before the long beat to the finish. Then the breeze stopped at midday, 0, nothing!

Finally after some painful hours we had a little breeze from behind and spent the rest of the afternoon gybing from side to side at huge angles trying to build some apparent but not getting much closer to the finish. A few of the other boats went pole right back, dead down wind and just pointed at the finished which worked for them but not on my boat, so a couple more snuck through, very frustrating but every boat has its conditions. We finally crossed the finish line slowly at around 6pm.

So a hard tactical race which required a lot of local knowledge, but we sailed well and had good boat speed, a good starting point, we ended up with 18th out of 40. Lots to work on but a good learning curve.