We lead the fleet down river

 Saturday 22 February 2014

I enjoyed having the fleet overtaking Little Dragon

The BRSC yet again again ran a successful Annual Regatta. Instead of Little Dragon becoming tail-end-Charlie well before the Goodwood mark this time Neil and I lead the fleet down river. It was a unique experience having all the A class cats hurtling past, soon followed by the Nacras and finally the monos ranging from Hartley 16s to Sabres and even an OK dinghy and a wind surfer.

Neil McKenzie took the helm most of the time

How did I manage it? Easy - we weren't racing (no race insurance) so started about 25 mins ahead of the first official start - the fast cats. With this head start we reached the Goodwood mark in excellent time. That mark would have been our turning point if we had been racing but as we were just spectator craft we kept going to the port channel buoy at Iluka. We were reefed as the forecast was for over 20 knots but we estimate the wind only got over 17 knots for the odd gust, in fact just before we got back to Harwood we tried to shake out the reef.