With various regattas we were again slightly down in numbers - made up for by 5 sharpies hitting the water along with Dylan in the F11. Welcome back to Sam and team on Voodoo Lounge after a busy month or so of sharpie and 505 events. As you can see Sam has decided to change the name back to the original one for the boat - it seems ever since the previous owner renamed it there has been a string of bad luck. Good indications so far as they got round the course with no damage at all. We also had Felicity from the juniors sailing on Blur and Glenn jumping in as forward hand on Pleasure & Pain.
We had some really close racing in the sharpies with four boats taking the lead at some stage during the race. Mainiac was sailing very fast upwind and led comfortably round the first mark followed by Space Monkeys, Pleasure & Pain, Blur, Voodoo Lounge and 1321. Space Monkeys carried a great gust from well behind and managed to be in front by the bottom mark. They held on to the lead for the next few laps with Mainiac, Pleasure & Pain and Blur fighting amongst themselves just behind. Voodoo Lounge had a swim on the last lap which slowed them down a little. 1321 was sailing very well in the conditions - great practice for the F11 states next weekend.
Mainiac managed to put a huge hole in their spinnaker and could not carry it on the last lap puting them out of contention. Pleasure & Pain just beat Space Monkeys round the top mark the last time - with the two boats heading high on the way to X to try to get an advantage. Blur sensibly stayed low and at X the boats all rounded at the same time. It looked as though Blur might win the race to the line - however Space Monkeys managed to sail through when Blur tacked to win by 1 second with Pleasure & Pain not far behind.
Its not that often we get such close racing - everyone had a great time.
Heat times are up on the website. Also, the pointscore is very close with Pleasure & Pain one point in front of Space Monkeys and Mainiac a further point back.