The day was full of promise; the weather prediction was promising, winds – it doesn’t matter what the speed forecast was, there was a forecast for wind, very unusual for West Harbour Winter Series where we are more used to abandonments due to a lack of air movement. As a bonus the temperature was predicted to be above average for this time of the year.
The morning didn’t start well with Rob calling in sick, which would have left us with three, no big deal but with 16 to 20 knots predicted a crew of at least four would make life easier, so a call went out to Michael, who fortunately was available to join Chris, Ann and myself.
The next issue was sail selection, the wind was predicted to max out in the high teens at about start time, the prediction was for it to slowly abate as the afternoon went on. Not long before the start it became apparent that we would be starting in about 15 knots, with most of the race being reaches, the logical choice was the number 1 light and put up with the extra power on the short works. My choice was influenced by a more pragmatic outlook, the number 1 heavy is more suited to the maximum expected winds, is nearly 10 years old and is really approaching the end of its useful life, the number 1 light is a lot newer, is not really suited to the expected maximums, my thoughts were that I would cry less if the heavy was damaged than if the light was damaged, number 1 heavy it was.
We made two mistakes before the start, the first was that I had no clear strategy for the start which meant we missed the start by about 45 seconds. The second was that although the course map was on display in the cockpit, none of us paid it real attention.
We decided against spinnakers, as did the majority of the fleet, and worked our way into a reasonable postion towards the top of the fleet, there was some very close action on the run down to Goat island, what could have developed into a dangerous situation was averted by all the skippers abiding by the rules an displaying good seamanship, thank you John on Hasta la Vista and Julian on Mind over Matter, thanks also to about 3 other boats and skippers that I did not identify.
After getting around Goat Island we set about making the best of our pointing ability and solidifying our position in the top two or three, after negotiating some anchored fishing boats and sundry pleasure boats we were well ahead of the field, looking back we witnessed a lot of the fleet sailing into a hole near Manns point, after a brief period of congratulating ourselves on how smart we were Ann looked at the course map, which was on clear display in the cockpit for all to see, and declared we have got to go around that mark. A quick tack that took Mick and Chris by surprise and almost sent Ann overboard we were off to the Manns Point mark rejoining at the back of the field.
Another lap of Spectacle, Schnapper and Goat Islands we were able to get to second place, John Veale on Hasta la Vista sailed the last couple of miles really well and were able to pass us on the final loop around Cockatoo Island in very light air.
We were extremely happy with our third on scratch, but what could have been if I thought more about a start strategy and did not miss it by some 45 seconds, if we (should I say me) read the bloody course sheet and did not miss the Manns point mark meaning we sailed 1000 to 1500 meters more than necessary. Still that’s yacht racing, we still had a most enjoyable day and as usual the comeraderie on the Deck of Knowledge post race was at its usual convivial best.
Some time ago Chris Low, one of our regular crew members took a photo of G-whizz on the Greenwich Flying Squadron pontoon. He then sent the photo to a friend of his in London, I think just to say look at what I’m doing while you’re over there enjoying a wonderful London Winter.
Carla, Chris’s friend, apparently has a habit of looking at a photo and then doing a painting from the image. have a look at what she did with that original photo of G-whizz, we think it to be pretty good.
A huge thankyou to both Chris and Carla.
A painting of G-whizz on the GFS pontoon by Carla.
One of our crew is quite involved with the Blues Point Yacht Club , he suggested that we compete as a casual entry in the last race of their Autumn series. (I think that they may name their series after the season in which the series commences, not the season the series in run in). For a number of reasons only Graham Dicker was able to join us for this race, G-whizz is easy to handle 3 up, but with the wind predicted to get up in the high teens a bit of weight on the rail may have been preferable. It also made another decision easy, we were unsure if this was a Spinnaker event (It was) or not, but 3 up meant that the colourful sails would be staying in their bags.
BPYC run their events at the eastern end of the harbour, starting and finishing at the Naval buoys adjacent to Clarke Island, their courses mostly involve Yachting NSW (Is that Sailing NSW?) rounding marks, with the possibility of Fort Denison and Athol No.4 buoy thrown in. It was a pleasure to race in that area again and made a nice change of scenery. Saturday’s race involved a run/broad reach down to Cannae point, then a work back around the Shark Island mark a loop around Fort Denison and back to the finish via the Athol No. 4 buoy.
Another pleasing aspect of these races are that they are pursuit starts, we were given a generous handicap of 21 minutes, although not generous enough for us to achieve a podium finish, which was a bit disappointing as we later found out they have pretty reasonable prizes. A novel approach, and one that I think adds to the race is that they also measure each boats starting performance, actual start time versus allocated start time. We finished mid field at 11 seconds late. I found it difficult to judge our start without the presence of other boats around us. I wanted to hit the line with speed so instead of running down the line and gybing at the start, I attacked it square on (to the line not the wind), we were getting there too quickly so we threw a quick 360, it would have been far better to run down the line and gybe.
The run to Cannae varied continuously between a broad to beam reach, with winds varying between 5 to 15 knots, not too bad on a broad reach but a little concerning for the return work, we were had our No.1 light up that with an un-reefed main gets a bit hard to handle in anything over 12 knots. We lost quite a bit of time trying not to be in the restricted area surrounding a departing oil tanker, I was judging my potential clearance distance by referencing the Braddleys head safe water mark, only to watch the escort boat an the tanker leave the mark to starboard, the net result was that we went quite a distance off our best course for no reason.
Being a pursuit start we spent most of the race by ourselves until we got near Fort Denison, where we caught some of the boats ahead of us and were caught by the back marker. Probably a indication of reasonable handicapping. We got to play with the back marker for a while. We were in a position where we could of held him out for a while by covering his gybes, although it was pretty obvious that he would out drag us on the reach to the finish from the last mark. I decided not to enter into a match racing dual as I thought it inconsiderate especially if they were competing for a series place and had to put up with an interloping casual entry playing silly buggers.
The BPYC web site claims their club to be Sydney’s friendliest and most accessible yacht club. Their club rooms are the front bar of the Blues Point Hotel. After an enjoyable après race drink with some of competitors, I have to admit their claim could be close to the truth. I think we’ll be back for more of this! Thanks Chris Winston for getting us involved.
How can you get frustrated on such a beautiful day? Leaving the mooring I commented to David Edmiston (Passion X), Club Commodore and mooring neighbour, that I thought we may not have enough wind to get a race in, he was a bit more optimistic. It was another sensational winter’s day in Sydney, maxing out at about 18 degrees, and not cloud in the sky, light breeze, very crisp, very enjoyable.
The race officials announced course 2 short for this race 5, which is basically 2 laps of buoys located in the vicinity of Spectacle, Schnapper and Goat Islands with a loop around Cockatoo Island before the finish. In what I suspect was an attempt to set a squarish line the starters were close to the southern side of the Parramatta river not in the vicinity of an area between Greenwich and Clarkes point as per the course chart, trouble is not long before the start the very light breeze had backed from North West to South West. There was a huge bias on the committee boat end, so that’s obviously where we all wanted to be. The wind was wavering in the high 2 knot, low 3 knot area when Division 1 started. About 18 boats do not fit into an area about the size of a basketball court, much shouting and desperate fending, fortunately no real damage that I noticed. I did hear that the most bashed up boat was the committee boat. Having seen the Division 1 melee I decided to adjust our start plans and sail around the outside of the fleet then run down the line, we were a little early and ended up a bit too far down the line, Julian Tod in his Young 88 “Mind over Matter” had made the exact same decision, the two of us were beside each other for quite a while, being the leeward boat we had the opportunity to push him OCS, but being a nice guy (Actually I couldn’t see any advantage to us in doing so) I decided to let him go. we were able to slow enough to allow us to throw onto port tack just astern of him as the gun sounded. I did however enjoy the excellent glass of red that Julian offered me in appreciation later back on the “Deck of “Knowledge”.
On the tack towards Clarkes Point we were able to move ahead of most of the fleet with the exception of two J/70s, in fact by that stage we had also overtaken some of the division 1 fleet that I think had performed penalty turns subsequent to their entertaining start. As we sailed up the Parramatta River we won the wind shift lottery and now only had one J/70 ahead of us. The area around Pulpit Point was not so lucky for us, where we were now on the side of the river that only minutes before looked as if it had good pressure now had virtually zero. While we still in a very good position relative to the rest of the field, except for the pesky J/70s we found ourselves in no wind and the tide pushing us onto Pulpit Point. The only action I could take was to start the engine (Allowed in GFS Sailing instructions in such instances, provided no advantage is gained. I’m not too sure about the situation at Balmain Sailing Club though) and motor on a course that was away from the rocks and at 180 degrees to the mark for about 50 meters. after turning off the iron spinnaker we tacked towards the mark, now back with the rest of the field.
The area North West of Spectacle Island was now a car (boat) park with what ever wind that was present was shifting around in an arc of about 100 degrees, There were boats flying spinnakers (just hanging) while others were close hauled with sails flapping gently, no one was able to get anything set. Looking around we could not see any evidence of any wind anywhere, looking ahead the Division 1 boats were hanging at different angles, so we decided that a cold beer back at the club was the best option. Starting the Volvo for the second time it was apparent that the best way to extract ourselves was in reverse, which is what we did, still with all sails up. Some of the comments we heard from other boats were amusing. “Hey look we’re passing G-whizz! Oh I think they’re going backwards”. “Well at least they’re moving!” “Set up the tables Graeme, we’ll see you back there soon”. Not long after getting the headsail down we heard on the radio that the race had been abandoned. At least my record is still clean, every race that I have pulled out of early because of wind shortages have been abandoned.
It was a bit frustrating, I thought that we did a really good job of avoiding the melee at the start, then using the wind that was available in the early part of the race to our advantage, the crew did a great job performing every tack to perfection, and moving their weight to the best positions without any direction. I really did feel, early on, that were in for a good finish.
I was left with a couple of observations and points to ponder:
I am sure that the raymarine wind instruments have trouble calculating true wind in pressure less than 2 knots and boat speed around 0.5 of a knot.
Picking wind shifts in such light air is a lottery, if you get a few right be prepared to get the next few wrong!, and consider what the tide will do to you when you get it wrong!
And geez doesn’t it get cold all of sudden when the sun goes down!
There are a number of items on this web site where we express the privilege that sailors enjoy in Sydney, that privilege is the ability to sail all year round. Today’s West Harbour Winter Series race was no exception, held in winds that ranged south to south westerly, about 5 to 11 knots, right in G-whizz’s sweet spot. With temperatures closing in on 20 degrees centigrade only the cooling southerly took the edge off another perfect day on Sydney Harbour.
While we were well positioned for the start, we were a little bit early. We were not alone, a number of boats leeward to us were in the same predicament, I was waiting to be pushed above the committee boat, and after getting to the line about 20 seconds early I was waiting to be pushed over the line, however it seemed as if we had some sort of force field around us, we were at the absolute bottom of the give way boat pecking order, but were given plenty of room to run down the line before hardening up on the start signal. The subsequent great start was more good luck than good management, but I’ll take that any day. In the light winds we were able to stay with the sports boats on the work towards the Balmain shore, it wasn’t until the down hill run after the Schnapper Island mark that a slow, but uneventful spinnaker hoist meant that we lost a bit to the faster of the sports boats.
The crew did a great job running the boat, with most spinnaker hoists and drops going smoothly, the only issue we did encounter was when the lightweight number one genoa jammed on a hoist. This has been an on-going issue that we seem only to avoid with judisciuos placement of two sail pre feeders. I forgot to tell Colin this, but the first instance of this problem was the only time it happened.
On the last run from the Spectacle Island mark to the Woolwich Dock mark the wind was backing and veering between 85 and 140 degees off the starboard bow at about 7 knots, we gambled on staying with the assymetric spinnaker.
West Harbour Winter Series Race 3 2017. Pretty shy run with the Asymmetric. Photo Phil Hare
It was bit of an unnerving feeling to be the only boat in the race at that point to be flying a spinnaker, but we were also the fastest boat, it was also intersting to watch the reaction of some the crews in a group of about 8 boats (satisfyingly for me the group included some assymetrical equpped spots boats), as they scrambled to hoist spinnakers as the wind veered towards the south west, after we had sailed through them.
At the Woolwich dock mark, the last before the finish, we got caught in a group of division 3 an 4 boats, I thought it prudent not to fight for mark position and sail around the outside of them, a pretty good decision as the rounding was bit of a melee, unfortunately this also meant we were leewaed of a number of them and had to wait a long time to get into a position where we could tack and pick up the wind shift that would take us to the finish.
A satisfying result on another beautiful winter’s day on Sydney Harbour, we are privileged!
This post is a little late coming, in fact it probably would not have been written at all if it were not for some personal reflection on my sailing exploits over the last few weeks. I have been accused on a number of occasions that I tend to over analyse things a bit. In my defence I would say that while the criticism is probably correct I have always wanted to know why things went wrong, and just as importantly why things went right. In the past two weeks a few, three things in particular have gone wrong. These errors were in the basics, which is probably why we forget to maintain the disciplines.
Look Up
When working with halyards it is important to look up to ensure that are running free of any interruption. On G-whizz we have one spinnaker halyard that exits the mast at the head, two headsail halyards that exit the mast just above the forestay (G-whizz is a 7/8 fractional rig) and just below the forestay the spinnaker pole topping lift exits the mast. It is a bit busy in that part of the mast but the relative positions of each line can be ascertained with a judicial and concentrated look up.
Western Harbour Winter Series Race 1 2017. Photo Phil Hare.
We had to retire from the first Western Harbour Winter Series race when we were unable to drop the spinnaker. Phil Hare, GFS’s Sailing secretary sent me the accompanying photo of G-whizz passing Julian Todd’s Young 88 and DJ Holster’s Etchells (Just why these two boats are not flying spinnakers is uncertain). What got me thinking a bit more about this whole subject is that our assymertical spinnaker, a mast head spinnakter is flying from the hounds! Any wonder we had trouble getting the expected power out of it. We were unable to drop it at the leeward mark as the halyards were twisted with each other and the forestay. Necessitating a trip to the top of the mast by yours truly. It may not be the smartest to send the heaviest crew member (me) to the top, but I thought that if anything needed cutting up there it would probably be better if it was the owner making the decisions. It also provided some entertainment for the tourists enjoying a balmy Saturday afternoon at Berry’s Island reserve.
On reflection this incident started when I changed the headsail and furler rig from a racing configuration to the normal cruising set up after the Sail Port Stephens Regatta. The racing setup is achieved by removing the Selden foil feeder fitting and dropping the upper furling drum to below the bolt rope feed position enabling headsails to be changed on the fly, great for racing but not a necessity for cruising. I then raised and furled the Roller Furling Genoa for the trip back to Sydney. A process that I did by myself and completely screwed up. I DID NOT LOOK UP, and captured the Headsail Halyard between the headsail halyard and the forestay. This error was not corrected when the RFG was dropped and the racing #1 raised for the first Western Harbour Winter Series race. Again I think it was me that set all this up before leaving the mooring on the morning of the race. The error was compounded when the crew member who volunteered to be foredeckie for the day probably put another wrap of the halyard around the forestay while preparing for the spinnaker hoist. I am not going to be critical here as it was the first time that he had been foreword of the mast on G-whizz and probably the first time that he had rigged an asymmetrical spinnaker, and if he did look up was probably unsure as to what he was meant to be seeing, again my fault as I did not brief him well enough. This is not a criticism of anyone just an observation of the thing we can easily overlook.
Look out
In the same race we bent a mid ship’s life-line stanchion, what we are pretty sure happened, and the crew remember the “Twang” as the sheet flicked off the stanchion after afflicting quite a bend, is that the headsail trimmer did not notice that the headsail sheet had got caught on the stanchion and kept winching, looking at the winch and not the sheet or the headsail. The result was one quite bent stanchion. The moral of this one is to not concentrate our vision on what we are doing, but also be very aware of what we are affecting.
We may be grinding a winch but we are also moving quite a length of sheet and altering the shape of the headsail. Most of the operations we do on our sailing boats have “Down stream” repucussions, in fact why else would we be doing then? There are a few that come to mind that can have immiediate effect on the safety of the crew or the boat itself, these include:
Where people are working on the boom, flaking the mainsail, adjusting the sail cover/bag or lazy jacks, it is imperative that the person who may be tidying the mainsheet and adjusting the traveller is also looking out for their team mates potentially hanging from the boom. There are many examples of this and they can have results ranging from the embarrassing to the expensive, Having your nose buried in an electronic navigation devise and not looking out at your environment can have very expensive consequences.
Having your nose buried in an electronic navigation devise and not looking out at your environment can have very expensive consequences.
There are innumerable other examples.
We have all got transfixed on the job we are doing at the expense of our awareness of what the down stream effects are, it is simple but easily forgotten. Again I am not critical of anyone but who can we honestly say that this is something they have not been guilty of?
Loosen up
Over the past few weeks I have been crewing on Michael Grove’s Jeanneau 379, “Agrovation” (Could this be the fastest 379 around? I’m sure Michael is sailing this thing way faster than its design parameters). Last week in light air Michael was getting frustrated that he could not get the boat up to speed, I was on the main and could sense his frustration.
Later on talking about the race and thinking about what we did, it was obvious that we had the boat tightened down too much. I had completely forgotten a rule drummed into me by some great sailors when I was learning – “When in doubt, Let it out”.
The crew on Agrovation that day were all very experienced sailors, most of them very accomplished dinghy (me excluded) sailors. We all forgot, keep it loose in the light!
When thinking about this it brought a few other recollections, I have experienced on many boats, trimmers that after they trim a sail they tighten it a bit more, almost as if there is something that says, well if we are going this fast with the sail pretty tight, we must go faster if it is a bit tighter. There will be many that don’t believe this, but keep a lookout and I’ll bet you’ll see it for your self at some stage.
Along the same lines, when we first took delivery of G-whizz, Rod Parry, the previous owner gave us the sage advise, sail her loose! Advise that some how found its way to the bottom of the filing cabinet we call our memory. Highlighted halfway through the twilight series last summer sailing season. We went from getting results in the bottom half of the fleet to achieving results near the top, the only difference was that we had a greater mix of females on the crew, without being sexist they lacked the testosterone of the opposite sex and were unable to get that final bit out of the winch. I probably state the obvious here, morevthan likely they used their brains and knew not to put that final bit into the winch. The looser halyards and regularly the looser sheeting gave us considerably more speed in the inevitable light twilight conditions.
Look up, look out and loosen up, the basics that we tend to forget when we try to overthink things.
I suspect that most regular users have a deep affection for the boats they sail on, an affection so strong that certain undesirable characteristics of this maritime relationship are over looked, forgiven or just put up with because it’s part of the package. There must also be in some instances a characteristic that just needs to be put right, but in a sympathetic fashion.
One characteristic, that falls in the last category, with the Elan 340 are the door handles, these beautiful satin finished stainless steel items would do justice to an up market house, we are not too sure exactly why or how they found there way on to a 10 metre sailboat. These handles protrude from the door by more than five centimetres , weight about 350 grams each, and are more than just a nuisance, they can be dangerous. They were a characteristic that we could not put up with, but one that had to be rectified in a sympathetic fashion.
Like a lot of others we utilise the V berth as a sail locker when racing, most of the time sails are removed and replaced via the forward hatch but on many occasions sails are passed through the saloon to and from the cockpit, inclement weather/sea conditions, loading or unloading before and after racing or after spinnaker repacking, inevitably the door handle would get tin the way.
From a personnel point of view these handles also posed a hazard, their shape and protrusion has caused a number of minor injuries, mostly bruising, but in a couple of instances something a little more frightening. Anyone familiar with the Elan 340, I suspect something that is in common with most modern sub 35 foot performance cruisers, would know that the room in the heads is a little restricted, when showering, the door handle can de quite a threat to bodily safety.
We have now replaced the beautiful Italian satin finished stainless steel Olivari handles with almost flush fitting circular units, also satin finished stainless steel, from a Chinese source. We hope that Elan will forgive us. Compare the handles in the following photographs.
Comparison: Original door handle and new flush (almost) handle.Comparison: Original door handle and new flush (almost) handle.Comparison: Original door handle and new flush (almost) handle.
It has just occurred to me that while I have written a bit about G-whizz at Sail Port Stephens, I have not written about the event itself.
This was the second time we have taken G-whizz to Sail Port Stephens. On both occasions we have enjoyed the event immensely. In its 10 years this event is as well orgsnised as some of the more popular and better known events held annually in the Whitsundays.
I like to compare Sail Port Stephens with Airlie Beach Race Week, both events are organised by a competent and energetic organisation, supported by a group of enthuiastic and friendly volunteers. Both are held in waters associated with a town that is welcoming to visitors and has a large selection of accomodation, for people and boats. Both regattas, in the cruising classes, involve passage courses that are more enjoyable and relaxing for part time/social crews.
Best of all is that Port Stephens is anything from a long day sail, to a relaxing three day cruise from Sydney, with stops in the Pittwater and Newcastle. Crew that actually have paying jobs can easily participate, with a bit of annual leave and a two and a half hour drive from Sydney so it’s much easier to sail your own boat (ask anyone that has gone through the logistics of getting a yacht from Sydney to the Whitsundays and back). As far as I can figure the event’s structure is pretty unique in New South Wales. OK; this is all written from a Sydneyite’s perspective, but that is where we and a lot of other yachties live and play.
We’ll be booking early for next year, this event can only get more popular.
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I have just been reminded that after dinner, during on-going drinks in one of our apartments at Cote d’Azure following on from race 2 of Performance cruising at Sail Port Stephens 2017, we had a discussion about the incident that took place at the Providence South mark.
The scene is the dining table in apartment 27 of Cote d’Azure.
The discussion is held along the lines of a protest hearing incident re-enactment.
The boats are represented by appropriately folded paper napkins.
Where appropriate bow sprits are represented with tooth picks.
Providence South Mark is a “Crowny”, glasses of wine purely for participant use.
Left to right in the first frame are napkins reperesenting:
1 – Agrovation
2- G-whizz
3 – Mascap
Review committee are the crew of G-whizz, chaired by Danni Birchall the fore deckie.
The facts are simply this:
Agrovation after rounding temporarily left a space between it and the mark, the skipper of G-whizz temporarily though that there was space to sneak into, the skipper of Mascap surely saw this and though “Oh shit” time to give this fool some room or this will end in tears. After temporarily leaving the space Agrovation permanently closed it, G-whizz steered to starboard to avoid hitting the mark, Mascap decided to also steer to starboard to give G-whizz some more room.
There was some discussion at the time mainly from Danni on the fore deck that went along the lines of “Oh Shit!”, on hearing this Michael Grove on the helm of Agrovation turned to look at the situation and subsequently also exclaimed “Oh shit”. Someone on Mascap gave the sage and accurate advice of “You can’t do that”, the upshot is that the bow sprit of G-whizz missed the stern of Agrovation by inches (or less) the actual measurement will never be accurately known, apart from the fact that it probably was a bit close.
The findings of this re-enactment (Call it a private protest hearing) is that we were lucky that Mascap did not protest us, we surely would have lost that hearing, I am glad that when they passed us to windward on the work back to Yakaaba head, we did not make life too difficult for them. I’m also glad that Michael is still talking to me.
I never did get the opportunity to both apologise to and thank Peter McClelland from Mascap for my mistake and his sensible seamanlike actions.
Do nice guys (or boat crews) come last? Not really but that is the way it felt today.
Again today we were a bit short crewed and once again we decided not to use spinnakers, with light winds I thought that we could get away with no big colourful things, what we would lose down wind we would make up on the windward works.
Now the first nice guy bit, at the start we were in a position to make life very difficult for a few boats, we were the leeward boat heading straight for the committee boat on a starboard tack. there were a few boats to windward, while most of them could luff up and wait or bear away and go behind us, one boat had only one option, to steer above the committee and do a 360 before starting, that boat was Umzimkulu 2, half the crew of which sailed with us in our very successful Sail Port Stephens campaign. I decided it would be nice to let him through, the bugger went on to win the race.
The second nice guy bit came at the finish of the race, which was frustratingly shortened at the end of a down wind run, we needed the final windward work to make up for our lack of spinnakers, I said to the crew that if we continued to sail to designated course, ignoring the shortened course we would win the race on a protest against the committee, my reasoning was; the committee boat setting the shortened course finish line was only flying a blue flag, the sailing instructions state that a blue flag signifies the finish line, it also state in the sailing instructions that a blue flag is a division flag. The sailing instructions also state that a S code flag will signify a shortened course. There was no S code flag flying so according to the sailing instructions the course had not been shortened.
I decided that a protest against the committee was not the best action, if successful it would not give us a result in the autumn series, it would reflect badly on a couple of great guys on the committee boat and probably put us off side with most of the Club members (There are many other ways that I can think of that would achieve the same result). It is also possible that the protest could have failed.
So there you go, nice guys do finish last, or nearly last. (Stone motherless last on handicap. 4 out of 8 on scratch). Not that I claim to be a nice guy, that’s for others to judge, today though I think I did a couple of nice things.
All that aside, it is a real pleasure to sail with Greenwich Flying Squadron, the camaraderie between competitors, the willingness to help each other, the great organisation from the Committee best described as just the vibe of the place (thanks to that great Aussie movie, the Castle).
Also thanks to all the people that crewed on G-whizz throughout the season, without crew Ann and I could not do what we really enjoy doing.
Thanks:
Chris Low
Chris Winston
Colin Worner
Danni Birchall
David Leslie
Graham Dicker
Rob Jarvis
