Hello Sailors
Well another year over and a new one just begun, as the song goes.
Congratulations to our winter series winners, Paul Elson in Orion who took 1st in IRC 4 with 4 bullets, closely followed by our commodore in Rumrunner, also with four bullets but lost out on countback.
Richard Woof in Jo 90 took first in IRC 3 with his 5 bullets, Arcsine and Passion also put up a good fight but was not enough, well there's always next year.
But onto the highlight of the racing calendar, The Boxing day Race .
Now I've always wanted to be sailing up the harbour with the kite up right from when I first started keelboat racing in Mickey Carter's UFO Manana, but it has always eluded me . Oh the joy when I clicked on windfinder to find SE 8kts , "Nick I think we can kite up the harbour on that can't we?"
Well, sadly we came around the outer marker X, at the back of the leaders in the fleet, but the bonus was we had the majestic sight of all the Asymmetric's approaching the harbour all line astern like battleships in the Atlantic ,in fact little did we know the Battle was about start with our old rival QU AU Rhum.
As we approached the Harbour entrance bang went the finishing gun, "that's Jo90 ,right well that's another trophy we ain't got but let's catch the rest up"
The advantage of being behind is we could see the other boats going light, We stayed on the Condor side and went as close to the big tyre as we dared.
Rhum and Saskia had their fight whilst we slowly crept up stream like the Cockleshell heroes,
Ah we'd been rumbled!
"Ricky gybe over and we'll Starboard em" said Mickey on Rhum.
Much shouting, barracking and pointing ensued, "You ain't got no rights there Gary" to the amusement of the spectators on the harbour wall.
Unfortunately our efforts were not enough bang for Saskia, bang for Rhum, and finally bang for Bon Vacances, but what a race!
Once again congratulations to the Winners Jo90 and our runners up, thanks to the commodore and his race team, whilst making a guest appearance The Pascoes' in their VX1, only 39 seconds off first place.
We look forward to seeing you in 2019.
Gary Owens
CCC
