As I Saw It (and remembered it!)

This week saw 7 Etchells in the water. We welcomed our Rear Commodore Todd Anderson and the TAG crew to their first race of the season along with Stephen Broadbent and his crew from the Gold Coast who are racing Chaos Theory in this coming weekends State Championships and wanted a hit out with the RQ fleet. 

With most of the Knot Easy crew out injured Chris N jumped on board The Saint in lieu of Marty who was also out due to an injury.  

Unfortunately, The Project had an issue with their main halyard before departing the marina meaning they spent the rest of the afternoon pulling out the rig and replacing the halyard. For those that made it to the race track, we faced a 7-10 knot ‘sick’ easterly and as usual is such a breeze with was a day of snakes and ladders. 

Race one saw most of the fleet fighting for the boat end while Rapscallion and Waterloo Too lined up for the pin. Waterloo Too was a couple of seconds too early necessitating a bail out and start on port behind the fleet. Shortly after the start, most of the fleet had tacked and headed off to the right. Rapscallion held on to starboard the longest and by mid beat has a commanding lead over the rest of the fleet, but what Huey gives, Huey also takes away and by the top those on the right, with a favourable shift and a bit more pressure, were right back in it. 

Rapscallion led around the top mark with TAG on their transom and a few lengths further back was Waterloo Too followed by Chaos Theory and the Saint. Rapscallion and TAG took opposing marks at the bottom. After a see-sawing beat, by the time they reached the top there was nothing in it with Rapscallion leading by just a boat length or so and ½ a dozen lengths further back was Waterloo Too. Chaos were holding off The Saint to round in 4th.  TAG sailed over Rapscallion forcing them to gybe off and by the time they were halfway down the run looked to have a solid lead. Rapscallion found one of those ladders and managed to claw ahead to finish just 15 seconds clear to take the gun. Waterloo Too rounded out the podium followed by Chaos Theory, The Saint and Athena. 

It was déjà vu again (sic) for race 2 with the majority of the fleet wanting the boat end and heading out to the right. After a frustrating beat where positions changed at Huey’s whim, Rapscallion and TAG went around  the top mark side by side followed by Waterloo Too and Chaos Theory. After a tough run in light sloppy conditions TAG led around the bottom gate marks from Rapscallion, Waterloo Too and Chaos Theory. TAG and Chaos went left up the final beat while Rapscallion and Waterloo Too right. Huey got involved again and provided a large left shift to those on the left and by the time the fleet neared the top TAG had extended on Rapscallion with Chaos up into second. Rapscallion and Waterloo Too managed to grab a few lengths back on the leaders just before the rounding. On the run the top 4 were spread out across the course with the first two holding the starboard  gybe while Waterloo went hard left with Rapscallion going down the middle. Rapscallion managed to catch Chaos by the final tuning mark at the bottom to grab second by a couple a boat lengths and had closed to within 2 lengths of TAG. Waterloo Too grabbed 4th ahead of Athena who had a good race and finished comfortably ahead of The Saint.  

It’s great to see Athena leading the handicap series with 4 bullets from 4 races.    

The day rounded out with a feast of chicken wings back at the hardstand. Thanks Chris. 

Boat of the day goes to TAG (on count back) from Rapscallion. 

See you all for the States next week.  

(The author accepts no responsibilities for any inaccuracies, distortions of the truth or outright lies.)