Ent Inlands - Rutland 2006

Grrr...this is the second time I've written this 'cus Blogger managed to loose the last post... here we go again, the "lost" post was good, this might not be so good...

So its interesting that at the time of writing this, the only write-up I could find is on yachts and yachting and is centred around North Sails (they won the event), no formal write-up as yet... so the results are very sketchy... I'm not happy 'cus it cost a fortune and we didin't win, didn't come in the top 10 and basically didin't perform as required; I'll try to be positive so bear with me!

Saturday came...sun shone, but bugger all breeze, the 10 knots promised was not present.. not in Rugby, not along the A14 and not at Rutland...

Met James at the club, put on my shades, wandered over to the boats in my shorts and flops..I love summer... finished rigging the boat and went and entered... 20 squids for the association (sorry it was so late) and 50 squids for the event! Thats 'cus I'm lazy and didnt get the early entry discount of 20 pounds, I think its disgusting t0 charge 50 for 2 days sailing, no extras, no food, no great prizes no special social....come on Enterprise Championship Committee sort it out and make the pricing fair...or use clubs that let us charge a reasonable fee!

So now I had limited cash, seemed like a good idea to squander my remaining shiny pennies on a bacon and bree baguette...with brown sauce and a coffee... fantastic...(apart from It fell off the plate onto the floor but I ate it anyway!). Sat there on the veranda with James, chilling chatting catching up with old friends.... then mad rush to change and launch 'cus despite the crap wind they sent us out to race.... so after a load of postponement we got Race 1 off... we all had a clean start, happy with that, the wind was very light and very patchy.

BTW the quality of the fleet was bloody excellent, World, National, Masters and Open Champions and my guess is that 20 of the 60 boats that entered were bloody good yachters capable of some good results..

So back to the race... damned shifty, we had an OK race.. dropped off the front pack (10-15 boats) with Shane McCarthy and Rowley behind us so we can't have been doing that crap..can we? On the last lap (1st reach) the breeze filled in from behind on the reach, we got ourselves into the pressure, stayed with it and sailed around a good chunk of the front pack..yey! Come on guys look for the breeze!....Then we hit the dead-patch more boats caught up but we managed to battle and hold our position and ended up with a 9th..not too bad... after a bit more arseing around the sailing was canned for the day, off we went into the shore..shower, pack the boat up and hit the bar...

It was a lovely evening, light breeze (crap for sailing great for socialising), I only live an hour away so wasn't stopping and partying big time, I crashed out on the balcony after buying Gez and Craig a beer (first time this year I think) and spent a nive hour or so chatting with various people... talking about boats, sailing, next events, marmite, relationships, sail, boats, other classes.. a beer or so later and a bottle of Dr.Peppers and I was refreshed, chilled and ready for home...

Got home, saw the kids, they were excitable, they went to bed, had some food and crashed with Claire... several beers later we watched Pulp Fiction and I downed a couple of Malibu on da rocks.... classy hey!

So James picked me up Sunday morning... drove to Rutland, cover off and customery sausage and egg bap and coffee... egg broke yoke everywhere...yummy! Sat round chatting with the other guys 'n gals.

Shane started rambling about my successes in the Optimist fleet god knows how many years ago (nearly 20!) said I probably should have given up sailing on ahigh..too true, said it must be great to win the Oppy nats.... too true said he thought that winning the Optimist Worlds would be better than the Olympics.. not sure about that, I never got close (45th).. said I probably thought sailing was easy after that... yes probably did, used to hop into my dads solo at 14/15yrs old beat the "old boys"...jeeze the same old boyz are still at Draycote, still sailing Solo's and I can still beat them..but they "look" just the same, in my eyes they havent aged..weird... went into 420's and that was relatively straightforward, top 10 in the Nats, 4th in the youths... then it went a bit quiet, eventually popped up in the Ent fleet when I was at Uni, club racing was fine managed that OK, did well sailed fast (although Claire nearly left me cus I was a miserable psycho-git when I sailed with her!) BUT the National fleet was different, everyones bloody good, lots of "stars" and jeeze its hard work just to have a "reasonable race"... I guess thats why we love the class so much...isn't it?

Anyway Race 2... bit more breeze, but not much, still shifty-hell, good start, got into what we thought was a groove, sailed pretty well, pretty consistantly but only managed to reach about 14th..still happy though in the quality fleet....

Race 3 and Race 4 it all went crap, still got a good start (after a number of general recalls) glad I've managed to get starting sorted finally.. just decided to go for it, mix it, get in there at the favoured end, been sailing for 20-odd years so I can control a boat so theres no reason to be shy! But the rest of the race was less good, a lot of people were having fairly random results, but the ones that I "pace myself against" were popping in the odd good top 10 results, I started going backwards with a couple of 20-somethings Gggrrr... don't understand, maybe I haven't sailed enuff this year, maybe the stress of work is effecting things, maybe the things happening with James and the boat are affecting the results...maybe I'm just off my game... who knows...?

Finished the last race, dissapointed, packed the boat away, crashed in the club, grabbed some food, did some socialising, prizegiving then home....



Well done to Nick Craig (ex world Ent Champ and others) who was first and, well when I get the results I'll post the actuall results... we ended up 18th... I guess out of 60 boats a lot of people would be happy with that, but I'm not....

So thats probably the last Enterprise sailing I'm gonna do with James until well into Autumn, jeeze thats really weird...think i'm sad about that...what am I gonna do... theres some good events coming up, Tynemouth, St.Mary's Loch etc ... anyone want a helm??

Whats worse is James's boats for sale, yep we can use his brothers...but whats 2007 sailing season gonna bring... I'm not sure its going to bring the good sailing times I've had for the last 4 years with James... I hope it does, but if it doesnt, then what do I do next?

Anyway, if it doesn't pan out as hoped, thanks James for a bloody good time, your the best (friend) Ent crew I could have...

Right... thats it for now...lets change the subject..please...