Do you think the rules of sailing are different in India? I will return to explore that question later.
It seems a while since we enjoyed a sailing day as good as this one. Not that the other days are bad. Even the abandoned days I think have a plus side. You still get to enjoy the major component of the sailing day, talking crap with your sailing buddies, still happens, and of course eating the world famous PKSC canteen hamburgers.
Back to today, pleasantly warm with a 10 to 15 knot north easterly filling in. Plus we were able to welcome back Barry from his sojourn in the subcontinent. I am amazed that Barry’s sharp crew Ray and John were not permanently snaffled away by other skippers during his absence. A warm welcome back also to Rob from his brush with eye surgery and Dave with his dodgy left knee. From an outsiders point of view you would begin to think that the TY sailors were disintegrating rapidly. However there were enough more or less able bodied sailors to put 4 TYs in the water for today’s race, Digger Danny and Mitch aboard Grey Fox, Jim, Wayne Richard and Rob aboard Rosstered Off and Peter, Barry, Ray and John aboard Momentum and, Peter, Alan and me aboard Frou Frou.
What a ripper of a start and first leg it was too, with the 4 boats crossing tacks and rounding the top mark within seconds of each other. Momentum, did employ some interesting but effective tactics to scare Frou Frou and Grey Fox (with reference to the opening question of this article “Do you think the rules of sailing are different in India?”) close to the top mark buy employing the ”give way to port rule”. As mentioned above there may be simple explanation. Perhaps there are different rules of sailing employed by subcontinent dwellers, for example the “give way to port rule”, and, over a period of time those rules could permeate the psyche of the unaware long term visitor. This Has anyone heard of this rule, perhaps someone can clarify this for me? Anyway no one was hurt and good sportsmanship prevailed with penalties being performed where necessary.
If there could mention one not so good thing about the day that could be mentioned it was that we couldn’t shake off Grey Fox. Digger, Danny and Mitch must have been functioning as a well-oiled machine. They had Grey Fox motoring, pacing the 3 bigger boats upwind and loosing very little down wind.
That really sums up the final placing’s for race 9 of the Pointscore series. A long way ahead in first place was Grey Fox, with a big gap to Rosstered Off in second place, closely followed in 3rd and 4th place by Frou Frou and Momentum respectively. All in all it was a very fine day for mucking about on boats.
Next week is Pointscore 10. Frou Frou must tender her apologies as she will not be sailing. Her skippers’ niece has arranged to be wed on a sailing day and was not willing to reschedule. I believe that Grey Fox will also be unavailable for Pointscore 10 as her skipper has another engagement that weekend.
Lake Illawarra Yacht Clubs Lord Mayors Regatta is also on Saturday and Sunday, with the Sunday race counting in the Southern Zone TY Travellers series.
I look forward to seeing you all on the water soon.
The end Trev.