Wells was the next venue after Hunstanton. The wind was quite light and from the SW. The shape of Wells harbour is like a dog leg with one end leading down to the town and the other end out to sea. The knee of the leg has the Lifeboat station on a small promontary of land sticking out int o the harbour. See picture above.
This creates a very interesting tidal flow and with the gradual build up of a sea breaze over the course of the race it seemed as though there where two beats with a Westerly wind on the leg out towards the sea and a South westerly lighter wind on the leg into the town.
The big waves outside of the harbour made life interesting when approaching the mark in the harbour mouth, the waves became very steep and made the approach a choice of sailing in the relatively flatter water against the tide or bouncing across the shallows out of the tide. The first time I went towards the shallows and lost ground, from then on I kept to the flatter water and when teh tide turned it was lumpy wherever you went!
The start line was NE of the lifeboat station and the first beat was towards the town. with 2 minutes to go I sailed on port from the committee boat towards the pin end and with 30 seconds tack under the boats gilling up to the line on starboard and with 10 seconds went for the line and got a near perfect start. I lead from beginning to the end, not without some challanges but we just sailed very well and finished with a good 200 yard lead.
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