Saturday 6 April, 2019.
The 63rd Venetian to be held at the Welsh Harp.
And Sarah was crewing for me.
Because my beloved 13941 was still in for repair, we were able to use Tom & Sarah's boat - 13851, although it was carrying the sail numbers 1388.
Winds were force 4, with gusts of force 5. It was coming in from the East, which is usually a good sign for me, since I have sailed well in that situation before, and I know that the southern shoreline can be faster than the northern one in those conditons.
Bearing in mind that we had only sailed together about 3 times, we focused on enjoying ourselves, and ensuring that we did not hit anything!
Unfortunately, we did not have particularly good starts in any of the races. The first race I mis-timed the run to the line, and was below a gaggle of boats on the line. Time to tack off to port, and get ducking them all. But we were able to finish 17th in that race, out of 25 entrants.
The second race was after lunch, and we had problems rigging the boat, which meant that we actually set out from the pontoon and straight into the race. Overall finishing position 22nd.
The third start was better, but we still had to tack off and duck boats before we could find a passing lane. Final position was 19th.
So the biggest achievement was the first race. The course was 7-8-1-2, which meant a spinnaker run to 2, followed by a quick reach. At the final lap, we then had to beat for the committee boat. As we came in to number 1, we had a couple of boats near us. Rather than gybing the spinnaker, we dropped it and hardened up, keeping very high on the reach from 1 to 2, which would give us the inner lane at 2, and luff up anyone trying to climb over us. This worked - textbook. So we hardened up at number 2 and went full-pelt to the committee boat (biased line to the committee boat end) and managed to gain our 17th place from that manoeuvre.
So allowing for the discards, we ended up 19th. Not last, and we had shown some potential.
The spinnaker work had been fun, and we had done some great tacking.
All in all, and extremely enjoyable day. A great encouragement.
I still have a tendency to pinch too much, and must keep the boat flatter, but its a good beginning.
Now, about the idea of taking part in the other Southern Travellers series this year....
