Unfortunately, Race 6 was fairly uneventful. We did a fairly bad start out of the "gate" - a bit too low from the wake of the gate boat. The conditions were reasonable, and I felt that we had acceptable boat speed, but by the time we reached the windward mark, we were amongst the "usual suspects" near the back of the fleet.
As we reached the top mark, our boom grazed the side of the buoy - penalty. We went high out of the way of the following boats and did a tack and gybe before launching the new yellow spinnaker, but we had lost yet more spaces.
We ended up in 57th place - our worse result so far.
Race 7 we tried to make some improvements. By this time, the wind had strengthened, and was coming down across Looe from the North. It was looking like choppy conditions - not as bad as during our training days, but challenging enough.
This time, we made a reasonable start out of the gate, although we could have still done better.
It was another tough race, with legs getting very tired as we tried to keep in touch with the boats that were ahead of us.
The race was a triangle-sausage-triangle, with a final beat upwind to a finishing line in the direction of Looe.
On the final beat, we decided to "go wide" in order to take advantage of what appeared to be stronger wind conditions on the left hand side of the course. There was at least on WHSC boat chasing us.
As we tacked onto Port to make our final run up to the finishing line, I had left the mainsheet cleated, and we pitched over - CAPSIZE !
We both scrambled onto the boat, which by this time had turned completely inverted. The centreboard was down, so we at least had some sort of leverage to bring up the boat. I had already decided that enough was enough, and our race was over, so I called over a safety boat for assistance, which meant we were retiring from the race.
As Simon and I tried to right the boat, we leant back on the centreboard together - CRACK ! The centreboard had broken totally along the waterline edge.
I persuaded Simon to get into the Rib, and let the safety boat crew sort out the boat. They were able to right it after a bit of effort, having to call over a second boat to help at one time. Then I scrambled onto 13941, dropped the sails, fixed the tow rope to the mast, and prepared to be towed in.
When we got back into Looe, some of the beach crew waded in up to their chest in order to catch the boat and help bring it ashore. The boat was full of water, and we spent some time letting it drain out before inspecting what remained of the centre-board (see photo !).
Then, as we tried to warm up and recover from the shock, people started rallying round, totally spontaneously.
Someone found tools, another person generously offered to lend us a spare centre-board for tomorrow. People lent saws, drills, screws, advice and muscle-power. A crowd of GP14 sailors literally man-handled the boat so that the old centre-board could be removed and the new one trial-fitted. It was too wide, so had to be removed.
The workshop nearby offered to lend us their belt sander tomorrow morning, so we could shave down the centre-board and re-fit it.
I was amazed and very grateful for all the many people who threw themselves into getting us set up so that we could sail again.
Tomorrow, first thing, we try to get the new centreboard shaved down to size. If we succeed, we will take part in the final two races tomorrow.
Watch this space...
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