2nd place at club championship 2008!

This is it! The race of the year... :-)

I guess everyone who likes cat racing at our club looks forward to this event. And so do we, but....

Saturday was cold and the sun wasn't out. 14°C and we were heading towards the club to rig the boat. Was this the event of the year...?
Yes!
We arrived and it was blowing 11 to 15 knots, the wind came of shore, which made the sea flat! This looked like fun sailing!

A minimum of 3 races was scheduled. Each time 2 laps. This time there was no gate downwind but a buoy to take. And with the strong current heading in the same direction as the wind it would be a tactical difficult buoy to take.

By the time we started racing the sun came out and the wind was about 15 knots with 18 in the gusts. The sea stayed flat, so everyone enjoyed themselves.

The first race we missed our start and started at least 20 seconds after the signal. Good thing was that we started above all the rest, giving us free wind and a good speed.
At the upwind mark 2 Infusions were close together, we followed at about a minute with 2 other F18's (Cirrus and Tiger).
After a short spreader we pulled the kite and Kathleen was trapping out.
By the second time we came to the upwind mark we were clearly in third position, with a comfortable lead over the other 2 F18's. We gained on the Infusions, but they were just too fast, this time....

Once we finished we heard that the current club champions (who did finish first) got an OCS! Meaning we were second!

Second start was ok and we were closer with the Infusions. This was real racing!
The whole first lap we were chasing the first 2 but couldn't get any closer. In the second upwind lap we tacked away from the line the other boats sailed on. We did 2 tacks more than the other boats but had more wind and less current. Meaning we were first at the mark, followed, at a few seconds, by the other 2 F18's.
We gave everything with the spin up and managed to keep this position till the finish! First place!

In the third race we were burning upwind again. We were going faster and pointing higher than everyone else. Downwind we lost a little every time and finished second. At that moment we were first overall!

But the weather was nice and the laps rather short, so the race committee decided to hold a fourth lap... Now everyone could drop a result and the current champions could still finish first. If we finished before them now, we won, otherwise we would be second.

The fourth lap was no different from the third one and we finished second again...
Still we were happy with our second place and we had a super sailing day!



I hope we will still have a couple of nice sailing days this month, because then the Blade will go to the storage till beginning of March....