Hollowell 2006

I hate consistancy
I hate the rules where number of firsts, seconds etc beats "best discard"
I hate wind-shifts

"..Rainy Sunday Mornings and coming 4th all ways get me down..."

So that was the weekend, first time me and James had sailed together since June, jeeze thats way too long don't ever let that happen again! Sunday morning dawned, rain was pissing it down like it hadn;t rained forever and it had decided that we should eb able to sail anywhere not just on lakes and the sea... by the time we got to Shustoke SC in Northamptonshire (only about 30 mins from my house) the rain had stopped, by the time we had rigged the sun had scared the clouds and rain away and the wind, well it was just waking up!

It was great to see Steve, Jules, Jon, Alex, Youngy, Alan Beany and Jess and all again, grabbed some coffee, ordered lunch and entered, waited for the breeze to kick in and then went sailing... there was abouit 10 or so Ent's, not many but good enough for some good racing... hopefully!

Race 1
Not a bad start lots of bias and some fun and games but we all got off and the first beat was OK, got to 3rd or 4th I think... something happened at the gybe mark just in front of us... not sure what:

It's not clear from the photo but I can assure you that in a sunny force 2 (two) that Alan Beaney and Jess gobbed it in at the gybe mark... it was beautiful, slow, gracefull and..well ultimately a race-loser!

Anyway, racing was tight at the top for those that could keep control of their boats! Lots of place changing we went to 3rd, to 2nd, to 3rd again.. racing was good and it was cool getting used to sailing with James again.. Steve won (well done), Jon 2nd and us 3rd.. not too bad...

In for lunch, lots of spiders around for some reason, eat baked potatoe and chilli and a pint of OJ alfresco, chatting with friends, nice...

Race 2
Can't remember whetehr it was this race we had the general recall or race 1,either way, we had a general (think we ducked back under the line in-time), and the instigated the round-the-end-rule.. next start was clean, but close! Sailed OK, things were close again, didint really get our head round the shifts, hit a mark so had to do a 360... didnt loose any places but next season we need to brush up on our boat handling, the 360 was far too jerky and I used way too much rudder... anyway.. we battled for ages and ended up 4th, not happy not sad.. Jon was first Beaney 2nd and Steve 3rd...

Race 3
Straight into the next one, it was anyones for Steve and Jon and even Beaney with a win could do some damage.. we were racing for 3rd plac eoverall, needed to keep Beaney behind us by two places...

Had a crap shocking start, but made up for it up the beat, Beaney rammed someone at the windward mark so had to do a 720, that put some decent places between us.. saile dhard and things were still close, but Alan&Jess fought hard into 4th place, me and James 3rd, Jon 1st and bloody well done to Martin Bottomley and Ray for having a storming race in conditions that werent suited to them, they held on well to 2nd place by far too many boatlengths!

So that was the end of the day...3rd, 4th, 3rd.... Ala&Jess had ??th, 2nd, 4th - we both had 6 points but they had a 2nd so beat us Ggggrrrr. Still the racing was close and it wa good to be on the water with James so hey ho...

1st Jon and Alex
2nd Steve & Jules
3rd Alan & Jess
4th Ant and James

See you at Northampton for the National Circuit finale and then at Draycote for the final event of 2006...