'Blame the write-up on Oliver Overstall'
Fantastic consistency proved to be the deciding factor – three firsts and four seconds, with a covering last race tactic on our closest competitor, Grand Cru II bringing us in at seventh, but only a couple of spots behind them.
The end result was a comprehensive win of 18 points versus Grand Cru’s 23, with the other eleven First 40.7s in the distance.
Races 1 and 2 (March 31)
Race 3 abandoned (wind over 30kts)
Races 4 and 5 (April 1)
Races 6, 7 and 8 (April 21)
An 0745 rendezvous on Saturday saw a crew of nine assemble in Mediterranean sunshine and a light breeze which built and stayed solid at around 10 knots all day. Shaking off bleary eyes from journeys from as far afield as Birmingham, Playing Around was soon stripped-out, kicker-riveted and on the way to a [Flying Fish] start.
The first race of the day started with a pre-start crisis when a luff-groove screw was lost overboard and peter and Ed had to substitute half a split pin. It was an impressive sight seeing Peter wield a set of three-foot bolt-croppers to cut a one-inch split pin in half. I didn’t fancy Ed’s fingers’ chances, but it all turned out well - maybe Peter missed his way as a surgeon!! After that drama, the race was off to a good start and a close match with our main opposition – Robin Dollar’s Grand Cru II. A few minor hiccups with kite launches but sound tide and wind tactics from Ed, twice round a ‘sausage course’, saw us a close second to Grand Cru, but reducing our lead to just two points.
The second race was more eventful – but fortunately only for Grand Cru, which suffered a trashed genny when the sail came off worst when it met a sharp object on an early hoist. We again had a smooth two-circuit round in great sailing conditions, coming in second to Robert Bottomley’s Combat, which was not in the running points-wise anyway, having dropped all the first four races.
Combat pipped us to the post in the final three-circuit race of the day too, again in great conditions, with Grand Cru suffering the pain of a sub-optimal sail plan by now. At the end of a superb day’s sailing our consistent set of three second places had opened our lead over Grand Cru to eight points.
Back at Hamble Peter magnanimously offered to loan Robin a spare number one, but he had already decided to make a dash back home to get one of his own, so it was only left for Sarah to have a go at a less-than-inviting heads repair job, for Peter to set about a recurring kicker-riveting job and somehow persuade the lock-up man to free our cushions after hours, before sending Oz off to sniff out somewhere to take food and liquid sustenance in the village.
A grand day on the water.
Race 9 (April 22)
Another shorts and T-shirt day, but this time it was a little more misty and humid, the breeze never built and the London marathon runners suffered in the mid-20’s temperatures.
We suffered too – in the light winds we just couldn’t seem to get the boat’s speed up. Peter, mainly silently, fumed and fretted about the possibility of seaweed caught round the prop, but maybe it was just that we had taken on 50 litres of fuel and an extra body or two overnight, and in the light airs the extra weight was more of a hindrance than a help?
Anyway, fortunately it didn’t count against us. We shadowed Grand Cru round the day’s first much longer combined 40.7 and Class 2 course. Oz nursed, not quite so silently, a couple of different kites, and after a tense half hour drifting finally towards and over the finish line we were only a couple of spots behind The Enemy, and the series was in the bag when the Committee decided that the lack of wind versus the lure of the Clubhouse favoured abandoning an attempt on the final race of the schedule.
We all made it back to the Warsash clubhouse for a celebratory drink, with Bethany determinedly trying her best to mark her ascent to the top of the mast, and her successful sharp end performance, by getting her hands on both bottles of champagne, little affected by Fatherly Words, but eventually succumbing to She Who Must Be Obeyed, Sarah!