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Another day of light winds and pretty much a drag race for the last of the Valmadre series. The race committee chose an Easterly course odd with NE blowing and the forecast NE tending North forecast. This gave very little opportunity to play tactics and from a crewmans point of very quiet, only 2 tacks in the entire race! From a navigation point of view still not having wind instruments made the chosen course a bit of a relief and only made it interesting trying to estimate apparent wind angles for sail selections. Mind you it seemed that others had more trouble than us choosing between bear away and gybe sets and also selecting what to sails to carry at each mark and we pretty much had it spot on at each mark.
We were a little early for the start and had to slow up leaving us without much speed on the line at the gun but in clean air. I don’t remember much more as I was busy sorting out the day bouy locations and looking at angles for the next leg. We tacked away earlier than most and I think about 3rd around the top mark behind OP and another that had a poor hoist and was soon passed. A shy kite run that went shyer when the wind went north and we had to drop to a heady to reach Eastern windmills. Al without event but Syrenka blew a kite whilst bearing down on us fast with that huge main.
The rest of the race was pretty uneventful apart from a ship decided to sail through the fleet making things a little interesting for a while but nothing like the last race and we were safely through.
It was a tight finish with OP somehow thinking they could carry a kite on the last leg, even without wind instruments we called it right,,, but….then we hesitated when we saw what OP were doing. we had it right in the first place and had we have stuck to plan it would of given us the 10 metres we needed to get in front from where we would have been able to hold them to the finish. As it turned out our hesitation caused confusion amongst the crew and resulted in a poor drop. This gave OP time to recover from their optimistic call and we were almost dead even heading up the last leg. OP further down wind crept up on us and both boats drag raced to the finish. Side by side on PORT tack gave them right of way and were able to push us up and out of contention. We were forced to concede and followed them home kicking ourselves afterwards for hesitating at the last mark. Oh well, that’s racing and OP took the honours 5 metres in front. Well done and that I assume hands them the series, but not without fight. And I’m sure there will be many duels to come.
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