Back in the UK

Holiday is over, back to work and back to the Welsh Harp. Bubble was sailed at the Brent Regatta, an event organised jointly by BTYC and Seahorse Sailing Club, and finished third on one of the races. Obviously, it wasn’t sailed by me, but this means that she is a good boat that can win races. More pressure on me? I don’t think so. I am a newbie, really, by anybody’s standards so I don’t feel any pressure.

This morning I woke up nice and early and went to the Welsh Harp. I wanted to make sure that everything would be OK with the boat, since it was sailed by someone else and I was also told that someone had borrowed my windex. No, no, it was borrowed, not nicked. Everything was more or less OK. I noticed loads of debris foot of the mast, so I decided to wash it with the hose before putting it into the mast step. Everything else was OK.

Somehow, most of the Laser fleet was late, so they postponed our start. We were quite lucky, I have to admit. The wind was about F2 with gusts to F3. My start was quite bad, but I wasn’t last. It was very shifty and quite frustrating. Couple of times my windex was changing direction through a 120 degree angle. It was quite difficult. I finished 8 out of nine, if nobody quit.

Between the two races, Brent helped me to re-rig my outhaul. I added one more line and one more block. This way I multiplied purchase by two! So, now it should be 6:1. It didn’t take us 10 minutes to do it because I already had the line cut at the correct length and Brent has his outhaul exactly the same, and the committee boat went out again. The race officer was in hurry to go back home early today.

On the second race I had a better start but quite soon I was left behind. Tom was behind me and I managed to fight him off for about a lap. Then he overtook me and I was chasing him. I was not doing very well, the gap increased and I lost focus. Eventually, I gave up. Once again I don’t think I finished last.

After racing, we had arranged to do some work on the club Lasers. So, me, Steve, Brent, Pete, Liam and Rob stayed there to fix the boats. The club spent about £400 to buy 2 XD power packs (that’s the cunningham and outhaul controls), 2-3 rope sets, old style kickers for the 2 old Lasers, bungs, tiller pins, centreboard retaining lines, etc.

We washed and scrubbed the decks of all of them, we upgraded (XD) the red and white boats, rigged the outhauls and cunninghams, re-rigged the cunningham on the blue boat, re-rigged all the controls on the green and cream boats, sorted out all the toe-straps, replaced all the travelers, put good main-sheets and adjusted most of the centreboard brakes. Needless to say , we consumed the appropriate amount of lager for the job, except Rob and Liam who are still young. Actually Liam had to go early-ish, but I think that Rob consumed enough soft drinks.

We had to pack everything up in a hurry because it was getting dark and we will have to finish things off next weekend. But the blue, red and white boats are more or less finished. We only need to do and check the cream and green boats. The green one needs some major repair job on the hull, but I am sure we’ll manage. Full day, then, at WSC. More next Sunday.