News from Cardiff!
My new temporary navigator was called Kay and she works with Whiteshoes. We raced in the first of three races on Friday - the course was altered on Thursday evening, when Rory Power, John P and Dave Field his navigator went out with Ricky Hill in his sponsors cruiser - apparently Ricky had been telling everyone that there was plenty of depth to race despite there being a place that dried to 3.5 m on the chart (there is a 12 m range though!) anyway they were going round the course when the boat suddenly stopped throwing everyone forward including Ricky jamming the throttles wide open - apparently there were foot wide rocks cut in 2!
Anyway the RIB race was reduced to a simple race round the mudbank race, and despite a 67 nm course we were only allowed 60 minutes which was never going to be possible!
Unforunately for us we had fitted a brand new Stainless Marine lifter as we had been very pleased with the previous one, although it was worn out! On arrival it was very different due to a redisign and the sliders cracked in the first race and the scrutineers decided it wasnt safe to race with (it wasnt) so we had no option to put the boat back on the lorry and become a spectator for the weekend!
The rest of the weekend went as well as could be expected considering the weather and the number of different classes present - the V24 fleet did a demo race in the bay and Class 3 actually raced in the bay as well on Sunday.
The forecast gale force winds arrived shortly after racing finished which meant that the racing was not as badly affected as was first feared, and as far as I am aware there were no serious incidents, although Ian Mackman did lose his 200 HPDI Yamaha right in front of us - thankfully the control cables and loom stopped it going to the bottom!
It was great to see some old faces and well done to Adam and Matt!