I wake suddenly on race morning... Look over at the clock in my room and charge out of bed in a panic, 12.20... Oh no, then I race to the kictchen clock... Hmm 8.30.. I think, need my glasses as its a bit blurred and im not really wke yet. Finally my phone, thank goodness.. 6.30am... Certainly got my heart pumping thinking I had missed the race. Best make lunch and get to the dock so we can get the 9am bridge. I get to Southern Child around 8.30, and we leave pretty much straight away!
Marcus decides we will do a quick run upwind/downwind before we start we are using new sails and the wind is up so it will be a good test and a little training before the main event. The training goes ok, but leaves very little time before the start and we seem to be struggling on the bow with what is needed to mark the starting line. So normally what you do is find the line and then line up with something on land to help you know when you hit the mark as there will be a lot of boats and the start can be obstructed from view.
11am and we are off on the first race, about a mid pack start we arent too quick off the mark but short tacking upwind we are doing ok. However, the hiking team are a little bit over zealous to say the least. Its as if their lives depended on getting across first, holding no prisoners this lot. Vadim the worst of the lot, I'm getting more bruising for his flailling arms and legs than anything else on the boat! He is soon nicknamed the Tasmanian Devil...
10 minutes upwind and we hoist the spinnaker, take down the jib and we are on our way, all is going ok and we look to be doing well. We have not long before the downwind run is over about 20 minutes, during which time we need to get the jib ready for hoist again. We start to prepare for a gybe's, it's all needed quickly and you can see the confusion on deck as to who does what when. Marcus sends out the instructions, calls out trip which is our signal for the various actions however, something goes wrong... I have no idea how but the pole just completely drops out of the air when the line is tripped.... The topping lift or up haul shoots up the mast!
Looking back it seems that somehow maybe the topping lift (uphaul) was attached in the beak of the pole only and not the pole itself, when it was tripped nothing was holding the pole up anymore, and at the same time in the confusion the outboard end of the pole was taken in at the mast instead of let out. We have to keep flying the spinnaker by hand, and then prepare to drop and move to white sails downwind for the rest of the race... Not a great start!! Everyone is in a panic and Marcus does a great job bringing everything back in hand.
So anyway, we need to fix this quick so as we are waiting for the next race to start we put Tony the bowman up the mast to retrieve the topping lift. He does a good job, we inspect the damage and then we are able to use the pole again. At this point we miss hear the call for the second race and one minute we think we have 15 mins the next realise its 3, so have to head for the line and prepare again to start racing.
To cut a long story short, the second race is not much better, whilst gybing the trip line is pulled all the way through, so now the pole is totally useless, we then put together a make shift setup to use an A-symmetric spinnaker as the pole for this was taken off the boat last night in the assumption we wouldn't need it! Sadly gybing the A-symmetric proved a challenge as this had never been shown before, as a result the spinnaker wrapped completely around the forestay and we had to send Tony up to retrieve it!!! Which he did but sadly the sail head was almost completely torn off! Game over.... We are out of th race.
The only thing left now is to wait for the bridge at 3pm and tuck into lunch. On looking round the boat, I notice e tweaker is over the side, and now we are without the blocks for it. All in all about $500 worth of damage done in a few hours.... A real learning experience, Marcus gives a review of the events for everyone and a good positive spin to keep people motivated.
I think everyone is completely shattered, drinks are planned but I am happy with my cold pizza and a relaxing night at home and early to bed. We will need as much energy as possible for the Round the Isand Race tomorrow based on our performance today!!
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