Saturday 26th April saw the return of full-on sailing to the Harp with the running of the Venetian Trophy. This typically kicks off the GP14 Travellers series.
I well remember the Venetian, since it was the first regatta I ever saw at the Harp, when I first went along to learn to sail. So it has a particular fond place in my heart. To take part is always a pleasure. To take part well is a massive privilege, and sets up confidence for the future.
Sarah & I had sailed together a few times already this year. It has been some serious practice times, trying to improve our roll-tacking, and launching, gybing and dropping spinnakers for what seemed like ages. We are not front-of-fleet. In fact, we are not yet middle-of-fleet. But at least we are hopeful that we have a couple of boats behind us in club racing.
We entered as "Bronze" fleet, with the expectation that we would be fighting around the back. As it happened, there were only two other Bronze entrants, so we had a chance at least be third in that fleet !
The day was characterised by flashes of brilliance, together with some significant errors and mistakes.
The first race saw us following another boat as we crossed the start line. As I tried to tack off into clear wind, it touched his transom. Turns ! Sarah and I sailed across the lake to the south shore, and performed some impressive tacks and gybes, to our delight. Laughing at our achievement, we re-joined the race. Thanks to some strong beats, we ended up in 16th place (out of 18), chasing the tail of a few other boats.
The second race was shorter, and we gained 13th place - our best of the day.
It was then time for lunch, where we realised we were leading the Bronze fleet.
After lunch, we managed to get 14th place. Again, this was creditable, since it put us ahead of a couple of Silver boats.
The final race was not so enjoyable - the wind had become very fluky, and we seemed to be forever gybing the spinnaker. We ended up with 17th place (our discard), having touched a buoy on a spinnaker run. It was possible that part of the problem was having too much kicker on the beat, slowing the boat down. Or maybe we were just tired near the end of nearly 4 hours of racing.
In the end, despite the tiredness at the end of the last race, we were awarded first prize in the Bronze category. Prizes were a Mug, Woolly Hat, and some stickers. More than that, it was a boost to our confidence.
We are already booked into the National Championships in Tenby, Wales, for 2nd to 8th August. We may not be at the front, but we are keen to ensure that we are not at the back.
Lessons learnt: put on the appropriate amount of kicker, try to improve the smoothness of our tacking so we don't slow down the boat. And keep consistent.
Let's see what 2025 brings !
