by David Hill » Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:34 pm
Hi,
a bit late, but here's my race report.
We arrived at Cowes Friday eve, and briefly met up with Russell while mooring up - however it appeared that our time in the beer tent didn't coincide with his. Still, we called it an early night as we knew it was going to be windy.
As you all know, it was.
My crew woke up with an almighty headache. I can attest that our alcoholic intake was 1 shared bottle of red over dinner, followed by 2 pints each at the tent. So he wasn't at all sure why the head was suffering. Still, off we went. Tony was sure he could work it off.......
Only 2 on board, so we immediately put in a reef and only had the jib up. Start line was a bit chaotic. Shortly after the start we had a 'near miss' on a port starboard situation. More accurately it was far closer than Tony expected, and he was helming! Not much later, the jib/genoa turning blocks pulled out of their base (the other side had failed years ago and had been repaired with a bolt). Ok, still not a real problem as I could still keep tension on the halyards.
An hour into the race while tacking Tony smacked his head on the boom.
At this point we decided that we'd had enough warnings. We bore away, back to Southampton.
On dropping the mast I found that at the base 2 of the mast planks had rotted from the inside. Mmmmm..........would it had survived the needles? The repair was estimated at £600.......so decided to but a new one for a little more from Honnor Marine. So perhaps we were being warned!
Congrats to Sea Badger - but we'll be back in 2012!
David