Serrated

photo: ken elsey

Unfortunately, we didn't race Buffy yesterday evening. My crew Hels is poorly, having caught some kind of fluey type bug that has grated her vocal chords and seriously impeded her ability to call "Starboard!", so rather than hunt around for a substitute crew, I decided spend an evening in with my wife. I'm away for the weekend coming with Dad, so I thought it was the appropriate thing to do.

Nik seemed quite pleased to see me, then she got a call from a friend, wished me a pleasant evening in, and informed me she was off out to play bingo. Not a game I profess to understand, but each to their own and I do understand the priority hobbies take, so I don't really have grounds for complaint. At least it wasn't Valentine's Day.

 

photos: ken elsey

Hels and I did race last week though. A light, shifty, failing breeze so typical of a Wednesday evening, stirring the waters just enough to serrate the reflections of our sails as we ghosted about the lake. The sky was overcast, a dull slate of flat low clouds, but the evening was warm and alive with clouds of dancing of sand martins and the occasional swallow as they swooped and gorged and feasted over the waters of the lake.

We had a great race. A good start, almost as much by design as by accident, saw us moving on the gun and in clean air, and beating "Ghost", the only other Enterprise on the water, clean to the windward mark. Ahead of the pack, we maintained our advantage, sometimes lengthening our lead, sometimes surrendering lengths of it reluctantly as the lottery of zephyrs fell in our favour or did not as the chance went.

photo: ken elsey

The other two racing fleets, starting four minutes and eight minutes behind us respectively, caused some complications, initially as our downwind leg crossed their first windward as they were all bunching up to jostle around the mark that lay dead on our own course, and then later as the faster boats amongst them began to catch us up and interfere with our wind. But they got in the way of Ghost as much as they did in ours, and so for a change Buffy's crew maintained their focus and concentration, and jealously guarded their lead through to the end.

photo: ken elsey

It's always a pleasure beating Geoff and Sue in Ghost, only because it doesn't happen too often. We do break ahead frequently enough, but Geoff is a canny helmsman, ever so quick to capitalise on the slightest lapse or mistake on our part, so it's unusual for us to win and keep a lead like that throughout a whole race.

Some things you can't beat though, and the RYA handicap system is one of them. If we had a good race, Pete and his Comet had a better one, and thrashed us hands down once times were adjusted for our respective handicaps, leaving us in 2nd place and Ghost in an honourable 3rd.