Enounters of a fishy kind

I was looking forward to this weekend and was disappointed when I discovered that the usual crowd were not sailing! My dismay was alleviated when I discovered that One guy who has not sailed all season because of a back injury was given the all clear by his doc and was rigging his boat as I arrived. Also another less regular sailor, Claire, was also about so in the end we had three of us, making a race feasible.

Then as I took the cover off Wild Goose I remembered that I hadn't fixed her from last weekend, I simply hadn't had the time to get down to her. So We took Poppycock instead and it was intresting to note just how much lower in the water she was compared to Wild Goose.

Now the wind was about a F3 from the NNE with a slight sea, the tide a very low 5.3M making it difficult to sail close to shore. I was gateboat and I was expecting to be leading despite being in Poppycock, simply because Dave, who is normally very quick, had not sailed for almost a year, and Claire is not yet of a statndard to be a serious contender but I noted that she was never far behind which is a big improvement from the beginning of the year.

I led the first race until the last 100yds when Dave had got to grips with sailing again by then made the best of his boats superior speed and broke through above me and there was nothing I could do.

Then a funny thing happened as we were waiting for Claire to finish; a fish jumped into my boat! Joanne leapt across the boat in fright nearly capsizing us. It took about 5 minutes to get the fish out of the boat, it was impossible to grab whilst trying to sail the boat and in the end I had simply to let everything go, use a bucket to scoop the fish into and then chuck it over the side.
It was th efirst time anything like that has every happened to me!

After our enounter with the fishy kind we prepared for the next race. I was gateboat for the second race and again led at the 1st mark, but only just and again Dave broke through and took the lead. We did well to keep withhim and nearly took the lead by the end of the second beat but he was just inside us and once on the reach he never looked back and opened up the lead to win by a good margin.

So well done to Dave, it is really great to see him back on the water and in such good form, and good to see Claire and Russ doing well, much improved and hopefully they will soon be serious contenders in the club fleet racing.

Sundays racing was a washout. 6 boats intended to race (by then I had fixed Wild Goose), one dropped out due to gear failure and the rest of us just retired due the sudden and complete failure of the wind! Oh well, I lose count of how many races have been lost this year to either too much wind or not enough! I just hope we don't lose anymore this year.