Shustoke SC Enterprise Open

Well it was a bizarre day, we didn't get much breeze, we had a shed load of thunder, shifts, lightning and more damn shifts.. oh yeah rain as well, and some sun. It was a race officers nightmare, the wind was shifting 180 degrees whenever it could and the breeze was "fitful" to say the least, but 13 Ents turned up and a load of Larks as well... Thanks to some pretty good race management the 2 fleets stayed fairly separate and didn't cause each other any major headaches...

Well me and James started the day after a stonking BBQ last night, lots of beer, music, chat and badly cooked food with a bacon sarnie and a cup of tea..Surely that's the kind of race preparation we used to use to win races...!

Race 1
We managed a very uninspiring race before lunch, struggling to show the form we know we can do... 1st beat was fairly good, but we go "lost" out the back of the front pack and never managed to get back in there to mix it. Steve & Jude Venables made an appearance in the new role as part-time Ent hot shots and promptly won the 1st race, Johnny & Andrew Audley was 2nd, Baz & Julie 3rd, Youngy & Rich 4th and us a disappointed 5th..

Race 2
With thunder crashing all around it could of been an electric race, but unfortunately with light randomly shifting and bending breezes puffin around it was another less than inspiring race... again Steve Venables won, but this time he had to work hard for it with Johnny taking the lead on at least one occasion, Barry was again 3rd, and well we were looking like having another 5th, but on the last leg, a very broad reach, we seemed to find some extra grunt and were catching Mike Cossey & Christine again after a close race most of the way round... as we neared the finish and were getting pretty close to Cossey, he gybed on to starboard and headed towards us and the pin end shouting starboard, we ducked his stern staying on port, a few boat length later he gybed onto port and we promptly gybed back onto starboard and headed towards the pin end, Mike was close to us and had to gybe to avoid us, we gently headed us both the wrong side of the mark and then ducked down at the last minute to cross the line just infront of Cossey to get 4th...nice....

Race 3
After a quick jimmy-riddle from the pair of us and a few major windshifts came through the OD finally got us of for the last race. Series had now been won by Steve so he chilled on shore and left the rest of us to play around in the dying, fitful breeze... we got off to a broad reaching start to the 1st mark, in the interest of actually getting a race started, so this made things damned interesting, we round just behind Cossey in 2nd place with a whole raft of boats tryin' to break free of the windward mark, a few minor incidents occurred including a couple of fellow club members shouting abuse and Julie "going for it" at some cheeky bugger who barged at the mark...all good fun! The rest of the race was a bit of a precession in the faltering breeze, but at least the sunshine came out! We managed top get past Cossey and Johnny fought through the rest of the fleet and parked up behind Cossey. So we managed to find our form finally, a 1st in that race meant that we were 3rd overall, with Steve in 1st and Johnny in 2nd which I think is respectable.

So, top 6 results were as follows:

1st Steve & Jude Venables
2nd Johnny Woodward & Andrew Audley (A Different Shade)
3rd Ant Clay & James Holmes (Tank Buster)
4th Barry Moss & Julie Moore (Goa One)
5th Mike Cossey & Christine Barron
6th Paul Young & Richard Craddock (Out of the Blue)

So an interesting day, at least now hopefully me and James are no longer psyched out, we can get things right tactically, have a bit of luck and get bullets... did you notice our boat name... we think it'll be cool until we think of summat else, James thought it up after too many beers last night on my patio..."Tank Buster"... we certainly are....