Stress!! Being the title defender sure brings the nerves into the game. This game should have been played last week but since we were faced with Force 7 winds on that Sunday the Championship was postponed to this Sunday.
After getting back from a great Raf Verhaeghe Challenge at Oostduinkerke on Saturday night we decided to rig the Falcon on Sunday morning. Start of the race was scheduled at 1PM so with our newly mastered fast rigging techniques we could put the mast up on Sunday and still be ready in time to start the race.
Predictions were Force 3-4, South Westerly and rain. Wind speed and direction perfect (flat seas!), rain not so much. But still after lap 1 of race 1 we were happy it started to rain. The first lap started in very low winds, very stressful, so we were happy a rain cloud passed over so the wind could pick up again. It is so much more fun to be able to trap out with 2 than to just sit in on the hull. We got first at the upwind mark and could immediately hoist the spinnaker. Gill was so focused on doing it right tough that he immediately decided to gybe of to the sea where the bigger winds were. But hey wait not so fast, you forgot to take the spreader mark. Ouch. I didn't notice it, and neither did Gill. It was only at the second lap when we did take the spreader mark, Gill noticed we didn't take it the first time. Oh no, no way back now, not taking this mark meant that we got a DSQ for this first race, altough we finished first. Sh*t! :-)
Even more stress from then on, since we really needed 3 more races so we could get one reduction. Thanks to the racing committee (they were really fast!) we did manage to pull of 4 races that day. And all 3 next races we scored a bullet. Fffew. We were very happy to take the title after all that stress!
We were again very thrilled with our boat speed and power. We found the right settings! Everything went very smoothly. Altough we have found some more points to focus on. We noticed that we loose speed during a gybe, so we'll have to practice to maintain boat speed after gybing.
The day ended with us receiving the very nice trophy for the second time in a row and a nice Fajitas dinner at the club.
Right now we are taking a holiday from sailing. We are going to explore the beauty of nature in Sweden and after that Gill will be ready to sail the RBSC Extreme again, with Manu Proot (who came in 3rd at the RBSC Diamond Cup, congratulations!). After that our next big race will be the Club Championship at RBSC Duinbergen. We are very much looking forward to that since we want to compare our new found skills and speed to the very good sailors Patrick Demesmaeker, Vincent Thierry, Jan Verlinden and Wim Deca. Exciting!
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