So, what happened, well the forecast was fairly good, warm and breeze, ended-up we had sunshine, and plenty of breeze...
Aboout 45 Ents turned up to Burton SC, the drive up their was fine, finding the entrance slightly trickier, but got there, met up with James and things were looking good. We grabbed bacon sarnies and coffee caught up on each others news, said Hi to a load of randomm sailors and finished off fixing the boat up...
First start, general re-call, black flag for all subsequent starts (typical bloody Enterprises!), arrrgghh bloody watch battery died, so two races needing good starts in such a good fleet and no freakin watch... you should have heard the pair of us trying to concentrate on counting backwards from 1 min to go accurately...neeedless to say we were a few secs out and got slightly buried off the line...
The beat went OK but the boat didn't feel right (or I was wrong), it was either that the mast was too upright or that we had insufficient kicker tension despite being 2 inches from block-to-block! James had had a new kicker installed last week that should have been exactly the same length hmmmm.... anyway soldiered on, found the beats hard-goinmg, not getting into the groove, down-wind was different, seeemed pretty quick, down the tight reach leg we were planing nicely to leeward of boats, but we were so far down the field that this didn't boost our spirits that much.. the rest of the beat played out similarly, crap beat good downwind... sailing around with boats we should be able tobeat really easily, but not... finished up in the mid 20's ...
Race 2 went a similar way, slightly better result but still as down in the dumps over our performance, I won't bore you with the details... we went in dispondant...boat away etc etc etc....
So that was that, time to catch up with our old friends, some who'd had good days (well done to Jon and especially to Richy Adam and Martin W), the noirmal guys were up the front...why weren't we??? Why? Why?
Oh well, not the time for getting stressy, drunk some beer, chatted, drunk more, eat through gravy at someone, accidently bashed Richy on the eye with the bottom of my beer bottle and the night degraded into the usual funny, chatty, drinky groove...finally, time unknown, I settled down on the folded down back car seat om my car in my sleeping bag and drifed rapidly off to dream-land or uncosciousness, not sure which!
Morning came, more sunshine similar wind greeted the bleary eyed, sore headed Ent sailors, grabbed a good breakfast role and coffee then went to check the rig settings...damn they were all fine, must be the kicker..mustn't it?
So back out for 3 last races and basically apart from me getting more and more irritated at our performance, some shouting at fellow competitors etc etc the results marginally improved but not enuff....
So, what's happened, is it a lack of general fitness, are our minds elsewhere, is their a problem with the boat, am I not thinking enuff, what????
Anyway the results are here if your interested and their a couple of random pics on Flickr....
sailing boat soulsailor
3 comments:
I hate those days. It's one thing when I know how I screwed up. But when I have a mediocre day and I have no idea what I could have done better... that's so frustrating.
The thing about racing in the Enterprise circuit is that the difference between the top 30 boats is not that great, just look at the results and you can see that a guy who got a second in the first race is no where near the front for the rest of the series. Small differences and a bit of luck, one way or the other, can change everything. You only have to get a bad start and you're sailing in dirty air for the most critical part of the race and that is probably why the boat wasn't going. Sounds to me like you're biggest problem was the lack of a working watch so don't beat yourself up so much.
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