Fishers Green Open Meeting
Today was the day of the Open Meeting at Fishers Green S.C. so I went for my first open of the season. We decided with Brent to go together.
Yesterday, we met with Brent at the club and we fit a tow-bar on my car. It wasn’t difficult, but it took longer than I expected. The problems we had were like the drill bit being just 1mm bigger than the chuck. We managed to finish and then we decided to get ready for the open meeting. We borrowed a double trailer (thanks David!), bought straps, loaded the two boats on the trailer and we were ready to go!
Having everything ready from Saturday, it all meant that we had to show up in the morning and leave to Fisher’s Green. It’s only 20 miles away, so we should be there in 20 minutes. It took a bit of time to find the place, even with a Sat-nav. Literally uncharted territory. We wasted about 5 minutes trying to find the place. Eventually another car saw us and the driver waived at us to follow him. We had to drive through a narrow dirt-track and this made things quite slow with a double trailer on tow.
Anyway, we arrived and we started unloading. There were supposed to be 2 races back-to-back, lunch break and then 1 race. Since it was quite windy and they expected the wind to die in the afternoon, they decided to do 1 race in the morning, lunch break and then 2 races in the afternoon back-to-back. The wind didn’t ease though and things got very hairy. Let’s take things from the start though.
As I was going out, I chose the wrong way around an island and I fell in a hole of no wind. I had to pump my sail in order to get out of there and paddle with my hand. By the time I got out of there I heard the gun. As a result I was the last one to cross the start line. The only good thing about it was that I didn’t have to worry about losing my position. I was only looking ahead. I sailed past quite about 3-4 boats. The course was quite easy it had a couple of beats and the rest was reaching. The reaches made it quite exciting and in the same time were giving us a break to rest a bit. The training definitely helped, because I could gybe easier and better. I managed to keep the boat flat as I was coming out of the gybe and the boom out of the water.
We went in for the lunch break and we were told that many of us had missed a gate. It turns out we had to cross the start line on every lap. The reason behind it is that they didn’t want people to get through the beating leg in two tacks. Unfortunately I did, so I was looking at a disqualification for the first race.This meant that I had to finish both remaining races.
On the second race I had a good start but I started falling back bit by bit. Nothing unusual there, I have seen it all before. The problem is that the wind had picked up quite a lot and I started capsizing. Eventually I go t so tired from pulling my boat upright that I decided to quit. I wasn’t enjoying myself any more and it was getting dangerous. Then I decided to go in. That was the end for me and obviously I was officially last.
We drove back to the Welsh Harp. Fishers Green is a nice place and next year I am going to be there to finish the job. This was a good experience, although, not very nice. It showed me that I need to sail in other venues other than the Welsh Harp. It’s a familiar environment and my sailing is limited within its quirks, rules and so on. I need all the difference I can get, so I am going to do as many open meetings as I can.