The 2017 – 18 sailing season started today on  beautiful Sydney spring day, the light winds motivated the starters to display an AP for about 30 minutes, long enough for a nice easterly to fill in with wind speeds in the 5 to 10 knot range. This season we have been moved up into division 1. Division 1 is dominated with Etchells and some of the faster boats in the Saturday fleet. There should be more boats in this fleet, but I guess that getting crew on Saturdays can be problematic for many. We were lucky today to have Graham, who normally is not available on Saturdays and Mick off Agrovation. The regular Saturday crew all seemed to be off doing something like travelling with family or in the UK preparing to swim the English Channel (Go Chris!).

We had a great start and were able to stay with the faster Etchells on the work to the Goat is.  Buoy. With only 4 on board I decided against using a symmetrical spinnaker and the runs were too square to use a assymetric. Suffice to say were not able to hold our position againt the boats flying their colourful bits. Performance wise that was the story of our race, catch up on the works then lose out on the runs. Our final result was not too bad considereing.

All that aside it was a great day on  the water made even more enjoyable with a convivial ssession on the “Deck of knowledge” with the crews of most of the competing boats.

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