The third for me and the fourth in a row match racetraining on GP26 at George Shaiduko Today started as usual with briefing, where the order of starts was announced and again the task was set to learn how to steer the boat without rudder.
Because the rudder, if you do not know, is the brake!
And today in view of the rather weak wind we were allowed to put on gennakers. On our yacht gennaker for some reason was not present, we noticed its absence when we almost departed and we decided to race simply. After the usual exercises - figure eights on the water, our battle crew was ready to race! Today again we had 6 boats participating and six flights, three of which had three starts and three of which had two. So, everyone was able to chase everyone. Today we didn't get yesterday's boat with the name Solentdear to my heart but Hamble which is also a nice place. I'm still waiting for the Fastnet boat - but no luck.
We won the first three flys in a row in spite of the absence of the gennaker - we outrun our opponents at the start and didn't let them control us. In the fourth one we didn't have enough extra propulsion on full throttle and we lost it to a boat with a gennaker, while in the fifth one we won again, although mostly at the expense of our opponents' mistakes.
During the breaks it was a real pleasure to watch the rivals fighting with each other.
Today, perhaps, imbued with the romance of a summer evening and the beauty of the setting sun, I would not call the match race as yesterday a duel, but rather a mesmerizing dance - a real Argentine tango on the water, where, embraced in a close embrace, the two decide who is who.
And here is the entrance to the start area, the first step, the start and then someone leads, and someone else has to submit to the will of someone else and only follow the leader ...
In general, the results of our crew with the super helmsman Valera, radical boatman Daniil, beginner giga-schkotovy Kostya and two more who came to replace our steward Igor, Ernest and Vitaly came first, winning 4 flyts of 5 possible, moreover, we were the only ones without gennaker! Taking good start and being the first to pass the mark, we calmly went backstag on wasted sails of opponents, who were scurrying about their boat with bars in their hands, trying to straighten gennaker, wrapped up on the staff.
From the shouts of the helmsmen over the calm water and some imaginative language we seemed to get the extra wind pressure on our sails!
It always seemed to me personally that all the fuss about ascending and descending a spinnch is something superfluous in the harmonious boat-sea-human relationship and today it proved to be true in practice. The gennaker is evil! But of course this is a joke and tomorrow we will definitely learn to set and correctly carry this sail. Today on the other hand we answered honestly ( «Yes») to an anxious question of the shore crew, which was coming around the boat after training, whether the gennaker was intact.
I hope everyone has signed up for a new training session by now! Meet us at the Gals!
