Following the massive collision the previous week, the week of 2 February was a much more positive experience for myself and Sarah.
We were able to use 13851 - the boat that Sarah and her husband Tom have purchased recently. She is a really well fitted and tuned Speedsails GRP boat, and has a well balanced feel.
We spend the morning rehearsing our tacking and gybing, and with some trepidation we headed off to the first real race we had done together - hoping all the time that we would not have any accidents this time.
For the first race, we were able to get a good start on the gun, only to find a very late General Recall from the committee boat. I checked with them - we had not been over, but a sufficient number of other boats had been OCS to cause them to make the late call for a General Recall.
Very often, a committee boat will do a Black Flag restart after a General Recall. However, this time they were being kind to us, and just displayed the normal sequence. We had a reasonable, although not spectacular, start.
The rest of the race was relatively uneventful. We keep our position, and were able to take a couple of the stragglers, to the point where we ended up in the second half of the fleet, but at least not at the very end. In fact, I was really pleased with the whole episode, because Sarah has become some smooth that I felt confident enough to look "outside the boat", rather than having to worry about technique. It was a question of "just tack here", and we did so - no fuss, no drama. The wind was northerly, so I was able to make VMG over other boats by heading to the Southern shore. A reasonable result to restore our confidence.
The second "B" race meant that we were obliged to keep clear of racing boats, since the race did not qualify for me. Nevertheless, we finished around mid-fleet again, which reinforced my confidence that we were a team to be reckoned with in the future.
We won't be sailing together for a couple of weeks, but the future looks promising.
Watch this space....
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