Road trip.
Racing has been called off for the day so the Worlds are over with only 6 races sailed . A light weather series for sure. I did get on the wire one race for some of the upwind and a few other times briefly. As we are pulling the boat down we realize that we will be sitting on the beach tomorrow with no boat to sail. Then a thought enters my head. John Ready and the Other English team , Paul and Stuart are taking the boats back to the UK to sail in their nationals in about an hour or less, hmmmm...... Road Trip. Read More
Spoke to Ryan , Jared and Billy and they are up for it so quickly pack the boats in the trailer and send Ryan off with John as an extra driver as his crew Alan hasn’t got a towing licence yet. Jared, Billy and I then rush around getting all the rest of the stuff ready and after seeing the trophies handed out for the worlds we are in the car and off. It’s 1300km to Calais and we hope to catch the ferry at 8.20 am its now after 6pm and peak traffic for some of the way into Milan and out the other side. We are off and taking bets on when we will catch up to the trailers, after crossing through the alps in the Mont Blanc tunnel we emerge into rain on the other side and with no lights on the road works it was a little tricky for a while. The rain clears and we start to get the average speed up a bit. We catch the trailer at about midnight and decide to go ahead and get some sleep if possible later in the night. Jared and I share the drive and we arrive in Calais after we have had a brief stop of about 50mins to rest at 6.45 am. Ryan and John have also driven all night but with a large caravan sized trailer they don’t make it till just too late to make the planned ferry. We all get onto the 10 am ferry arriving about 11.45 (10.45 UK Time) and still hope that with the 1 hour time gain we might make it too the start of the first race at 1.00pm. John has phoned ahead and they have told him that they will save pole position on the beach and have a few guys to help when we get there. We get to the yacht club at Whitstable at about 11.30 am and there is no pole position, no helpers and once we find a place to begin the assembly process we are at about 11.50am. Jared and Billy have been lent a boat to sail by Nick Dewhurst , the head of the Multihull assoc that set up all the internet campaign for the Multihull to back to the Olympics. It needs a bit of work and is also about 2km up the beach at his house. We are all working like mad to try to make the first race and hope that they will hold the start as they had promised. Ryan and I are going well and have the beams and tramp on and the mast up and look like we are a possibility till we hear the first warning signal. Oh well. We decide to make sure that everything is right before we get on the water , as the Tornado is the first start we have no chance, then I read that we have 15 mins to start after the signal and have another little push at making it. Jared and Billy arrive back and are getting into their gear too but again we decide we are too late and help John to finish his boat. We get out on the water and have a bit of a sail around then they go into the start sequence for the next race and John is still not on the water. Ryan and I sail over to the start boat and plead with them to wait as we have all driven too far to miss out on 2 races. They take pity and delay. Billy and Jared’s boat is a bit tired and they are thinking that they will break it if the sail it hard, they had already bent the bit of Brass tube that the owner had as the jib strut so call it a day before it gets expensive. Ryan and I win race 2 easily by about 2-3 minutes . Race 3 we are behind at first but get in front and again win by about 2 minutes. So after a mad dash to the UK a rush to get ready and then missing the first race we have a DNS , 1 ,1 score card. There is a 70 km long distance race tomorrow and when we get to bed at about midnight after being bought drinks by everyone in Whitstable it doesn’t take long to fall asleep.
Looks like the winds will be nice for the Forts race with a forecast of about 10-14 knots. The race gets under way with a 3 knot tide running across the course and we make the mistake of starting at the bottom of the line for the reach to the Forts, a gun emplacement set up during WW2 to protect the Thames. We had hoped to reach up a bit higher and then put up the kite if necessary but spent the first 4 or 5 minutes trying to get clear air as the boats further up the line all had kites up. The line was set directly up wind/ down wind so the messy air was considerable. Once clear the M20 raced away followed by about 6 tornado’s tight together and a tiger surprised everyone by popping up below us at the Forts turning mark. We were in about 5th at this stage and flattened off the sails for the return leg. We speed into second on the return reach and start to try to catch the M20. The race goes on and we catch them every time we go up wind . By the finish we are only 3.5 minutes behind, 9 minutes ahead of the second Tornado and waiting for the top F18’s in the country to see if we can do them on yardstick. It will be close, we are 18 minuted ahead after 3hr 50min. The first F18 (tiger) comes in 15 seconds ahead of the second (Nacra infusion)and 50 seconds ahead of third(shockwave). At the presentation ceremony we discover we had enough time to win the event, the first time for some time that a tornado has done it and the first time an Aussie crew has won.
The nation’s results are altered and our scores are removed, after we were told that it was an open event .They are won by a young team with good solid set of results all in the top 3. Jared was talking in the bar with some guys and saying how it must feel like a hollow victory having been smashed by the aussies etc, etc only to find out after that one of the guys was the father of one of the First placed UK crews.
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