ASCC Regatta

I had the great pleasure to sail in the ASCC's Annual Regatta with two very talented sailors, skipper Gavin Dagley and crew Dee Mason.
They are both from Melbourne and are incredibly good sailors. Gavin has won the ASCC's regatta every time he has entered except last year when he and Dee, without their regular third member Dale, came second. With Dale deciding to skipper his own boat this year I was the lucky to be asked to be the third team member. I was very nervous in case I was the result of another 2nd.

It was a beautiful day with winds predicted to lift during the day from the early 8knots. Because we were a light weight team (in lbs not talent) compared to our main competition we expected to have to hike pretty hard. I had been doing sit ups in preparation for this challenge but feared it wouldn't be enough.

The first drama was that our headsail has a broken top batten. We were given a replacement sail and it too had a broken top batten. What rare the chances. Rather than change the sail yet again Dee as foredeck, removed the batten completely.

Gavin can pick wind gusts that a normal person (me) can't see. He was always exactly where he wanted to be on the start line and ready to power off as the gun went.
Seconds to go... We are third from left (and right)
And we're off
Instant speed, (we are now in the lead on the far right)
And we're way out in front.

We had three other boats to watch out for. Dale's team, the boys that won the regatta last year (Nik and David) and the girls from Adelaide who won the non-spinnaker division of the Gay games both here and in Sydney (Julie, Julia and Meredith). Gavin clearly has a friendly rivalry with Dale and so we kept a very close eye on him at all times. And the need to hike was quickly realised. Dee is a champion at it.
Look at that girl go! And I realised that sit ups for a couple of weeks is definitely not enough.

Although we were not always in the lead the downwind legs were always good for us. Upwind the weight told a bit I think. But downwind we were awsome. We passed Dale and the Adelaide girls more than once in the five races.
Here we are on the left of the girls
getting the all important inside overlap
and first around the bottom mark!

We won the first four races which assured us the win but couldn't quite overtake the girls in the final race.

The boats came from the CYC's Youth Training Academy under the watchful eye of the very patient Jenni Bonnitcha.

It was a fantastic day and the race committee did a really great job

in between wines!