Beaten by a girl

In what appears to be something of a now forming habit, Hels and I raced our Enterprise "Buffy" around the cans again Wednesday evening.

It was a blustery one, the heavy rains of the earlier afternoon now passed, but the strong winds that had accompanied them only ceding the evening somewhat gracelessly; definitely faded now, but still with the occasional punch held back in reserve to catch you out in an unguarded moment.  More than one of the single-handers took an unexpected swim over the course of the hour's racing.

It was an odd course set by the OOD. A fantastically good first beat down the entire length of the lake and then strangely, a dead run, goose-winged all the way back to the other end. We then rounded to starboard for another beat, albeit heavily influenced and interfered with by the wind bending off the bank, before we got the one decent, planing reach of the race followed by a gybe and another dead run back down to the last mark of the lap.

We had a mediocre start. Good enough, but arrived too early on the line and drifted most of the way to the pin by the time the gun went. It gave us clean air though, so we pulled well enough away from the rest of the fleet to be first to be able to tack onto port and cross them. A tactical mistake however, as that put us into the shadow of the bank where we were badly headed by the disrupted air. By the time we tacked back, Alan's Enterprise had clawed back the original distance we'd gained from our start and was first around the windward mark by a well earned boat-length or two.

We won it back before the end of the lap, but the race that followed wasn't one of our best; a bungled mark rounding that left the sails stalled, a moment of confusion where I over-stood the second windward mark by quite a length, thinking I was sailing to another one, and one memorable leg that saw Hels and I arguing over what leg of the course we were actually on. Hels won, and was proved right, I should add.

In the end , we did still finish first over the line in our class, but after adjustment for handicap we were placed 2nd overall. 1st place was taken by Hannah in her Topper. I did say before that she was one to watch.

Buffy is desperately in need of some TLC now. The varnish is peeling, bits are breaking, halyards are getting tired and worn. Time and opportunity are awkward fellows to grapple with at the moment though.

One of the breakages was the roller on the main halyard exit block at the foot of the mast. It disintegrated completely at the beginning of the year. I jury-rigged it with a shackle to enable us still to raise the main, and have tried to find a replacement block since, but the age of the mast have made it devilishly difficult to find a block that matches the dimensions of the original. I mentioned this to Dad at the weekend. Last night he told me he'd fixed it, turning a replacement roller out of nylon on one of his workshop lathes and riveting it back in to the original block housing for me.

We shall have to see how long it lasts, but I am, as always, terribly impressed by his clever ingenuity when it comes to fixing things. He's a very handy man to know.

I'm supposed to be crewing a two-man sailing sailing canoe "Green Bean" on a trip from Watermouth Cover in North Devon to Lundy this coming weekend. It was the main reason, albeit not the only one, I bought a new drysuit a couple of weeks back. Twenty-five miles of blue, open water to cross in a 15' canoe with outriggers, I've been really looking forward to it. The forecast has been playing the devil all week, suggesting F6+ for the weekend coming, teasingly slackening off, and then coming back on in full. Unsettled would be a modest description. We're at that tipping point of making the call as to whether it's a go or no.

I hate being in this position. If it all looked good and the trip was a definite, I'd be brimming with enthusiasm, all packed and planned by now and raring to go. Because it's looking so marginal, with odds on that we'll call it off, I'm instead feeling quite torn, quite behind in my planning and preparation and rapidly running out of time in which to address this.

This isn't a complain. It's just the way it goes sometimes.

Needless to say, I have a plan B if Lundy and Green Bean do prove to be a no-go this weekend. I shall not be landlocked.