spring 8

Crew was john russ. We launched at 1015am. Wind wasnt much, we managed to go around the course and sort out our tactics for the race. We did learn not to tack to early coming off 4 as we got tangled with the mark going under the bridle !!. We did try to free it our self, looking as we were not going too, i called swan 4 on the radio, by that time we had cleared the mark.
mike chem said "how did could you not miss it, its big enough". we laughed and carried on.
For the race we worked out that we had to tack after only a few hundred metres up the course as the mark was off to the right side of the course!! we did this and rounded in 2nd place. The groome spitfire was in 1st and then all the 18's behind us. We followed as long as we could and even made up some ground going from 2-3. however on one leg we fell behind badly. We sorted our way thru the mono's and tried to limit our losses to Mark. we did a few different things down wind seeing if it would work.We finished glad that we had a good sail and the weather was really hot. No other incidents and rudders were ok. Mutley behaved for once or was it that the helm sailed as he should do !!
arrived at swanage the following saturday to check the results and had a surprise when i seen the results. john and i got 2nd place in the last race of the spring series and 5th overall in the series. a good start to the 2009 season.