admin April 15, 2024 Sailing Previous Blog Start Sail 1 Comments (0)
Two Sunday afternoon races in the intermittent sunshine. We started at the back to give all the other boats a chance but we we got to the first mark four boats in front of us lost the wind and we sailed past them and round the inside of the mark.
With quite a few boats on the water there wasn't much space at the start line. There was much confusion at the start as the race was halted for a reason none in the boat could fathom and a restart required. The condition were moderately windy with the occasional strong gust.
We were over the line in the middle of the pack and kept in touch with the other boats as we tacked up wind and upstream. As some of the boats reached the mark they lost the wind but we still had some to we sailed past 4 boats and rounded very close to the mark
As we rounded the mark the tiller came out of the rudder and we careered towards the bank out of control.
One of the Merlin Rockets Capsized and the Father and daughter easily righted the boat, but it was so full of water it was in danger of sinking. The safety boat came out and handed the crew a couple of buckets to bail out the water faster.
For us we sailed down to the Home marker and zig zagged up the course to the S marker where like many before us we got stuck with no wind and the other faster boats we able to lap us. It took us ages around the mark with the current pushing us down stream faster than wind was moving us up. We tried again and again to round the mark but did so as the last boat came past. The OK and us came down the river together having a nice chat in the stillish air. and we crossed the line with him. Now did anyone in the race box notice that we had only done 2 laps rather than the three?
The answer to that was our result didn't even get put up in the results page on the Upper Thames Web Site, so we will have to see what we can do in another race.
