Hi Again everyone,
Update on the racing.
Well Saturday's race No 2 we crossed the line first again! this time we had done everything we could to leave the 'La Sirene' as far behind as we could, we were successfull and we did come first after corrected time! We were now even again, having both yachts with a first and a second place. So third race on Sunday and although not much wind to begin with we had enough to get going. Our start was good and we pulled away from our class, this course is called the cannon and you race out and back twice on a reach. We couldn't pull away far enough from La Sirene so we knew, although we would be first again, we would get second on corrected time. It was a magic day though, Kate had joined us for the race as well and we had a perfect sail, what a good day.
After the race all the yachts took part in the parade of sail into English Harbour, it is a fantastic spectical as the big and small yachts mix it inside the habour, the crowds and yachts cheering and showing off, a good end to make it a perfect day.
Now Mondays race, this was going to be hard, as predicted La Sirene had won Sunday's race on corrected time, which meant we now had 1 first place and they had 2 first places! we had to come first.
The wind was so light this was begining to look impossible, the race start was delayed a couple of times before we finally got our start at 10.45am. With such light wind we did as much as we could to escape from La Sirene, and were doing very well against them, as we passed the second mark first, which had been a battle to get too, the wind died completely, the whole fleet of 68 boats were becalmed, only 1 boat was still moving and that was the 'J class' 'Ranger'. After about half an hour of this, there then, over the radio, came the killer news,,,,, the commitee abandoned the race!!! what dissapointing news, we now had no chance of evening the score sheet and knew we had Second place overall!
The remaining part of the day was taken up moving the boat from Falmouth Marina to English harbour dock wall for the prize giving on Tuesday night.
So Prizegiving party went well and my crew and myself were on stage to recieve the second place prize, a beautiful engraved glass Tankard. A good result for another Antigua Classic race. When I concider this in quiet moments, I think taking part last year which was an impossible dream come true, and then being here again, well its just a fantastic achievement for a now 75 year old boat.
More later my friends.
Roy
