Sunday was great!

The Sunday of last weekend was great. We had our annual club regatta over the weekend. The local sailing clubs, who are all suffering from participations in their own regattas had combined their efforts and organized one great event. About 50 boats participating from the OD classes, H-35, and X-79 to a field of 38 Yardstick boats varying from the fast Melges 24 (2) to Folkboats, H-Boats and the bigger X-34´s. It was supposed to be a family regatta, which for some racers meant that the families take part in the BBQ and dance festivities in the evening only. We participated with our little Bull 7000, shown here in the picture, during a reach on the Sunday.

Where have I been… oh yes, Sunday and "Heyitwasgreat.", the Tillerman group writing project. I will only touch Saturdays race lightly. To begin with, I had promised K. who is pregnant in her 7th month a light wind and some fun in the club. My regular crew must prepare their boat for the International14´s WC in Warnemünde and we did not want to miss the chance to sail with the local fleet and to see how we are going alone. We had decided early on that K. would take the helm and I do the crewwork. Fiddling with ropes and the gennaker is not easy with the big belly. There were a couple of events, mainly me reefing in and out as the wind had not stayed at the 10knots which I had promised but increased to abt. 20kn in periods. And always when we had to go upwind according to my feeling. I had to reef in and shake it out later. No gloves and fingers burning. I had rigged the gennaker sheet the wrong way and it was all my fault that we lost precious time. We finished the race corrected in 8th position.

The “Heyitwasgreat” Day.
Come Sunday and the Schleifjord looked very calm in the morning. We got towed out. People started to throw waterbombs during the waiting period and it looked like a great summer day. At around 12.00h the wind came up and PRO G.N. immediately laid the marks and gave the 5min signal. K. did a great start and we were holding our position between the 2 Melges up to the weather mark. She got the shifts right and seemed to be “in the zone”. Around the weather mark, the “kite up” and we were able to sail lower than the Melges with our articulating bowsprit. We did great through the narrow passage (Palörde), though the M24´s had catched a gust just in front of us which we were not able to hook in. It gave them a little advantage. The two of us now slightly overpowered in the gusts but able to hang in with the gennaker up. On the next upwind leg, I hiked like hell and K. kept the speedo permanently around the 6kn mark. It was our day. The big boats already far in the distance behind us. We had another great beat though the Melges were slowly walking away from us but not like Saturday. They had all their 4-5 crew hiking out hard. We lost about 3 min to the first M24, whilst on the Saturday it had been about 15min. Difficult to describe the smooth sailing, which we had on the day. Hopefully the little one, the unborn, got an idea of the great harmony which we had and which brought the best of sailing out of both of us. It only sunk in later that we might have won this race on corrected time as our Melges friends had reported to us after the finish. Yes, the price giving gave us the recognition. 1st place of the day and third overall. We went home tired but happy and… “heyitwasgreat”. If you want to see the results, here is the link: Result list