Date: 19/8/2008 10:00
Weather: warm but 25 knots again
Location: White Haven Beach
Author: Kylie
Hello everyone
Well not much to report on really, like most of Australia we have been following the Olympics on television and cheering on the Australian athletes especially the sailors. Much disappointment was felt over the 49er result, Ben and Nathan are both superb sailors and Pete really would have liked to see a gold medal awarded to his former training partners.
Well with race week to begin on Saturday we are preparing the boat, doing the grocery shopping and discussing tactics for getting a good handicap. So far we have decided to ensure we look as 'cruisy' as possible when the handicapper comes to see the boat, this includes having our rubber duck, life raft etc all on deck then of course we will remove them along with the wind generator and extra anchors, chain, dive bottles, mountain bikes and god knows what else to reduce the weight. Our water tanks will be emptied. Mention has also been made of sandbagging the first 3 races so we get a good handicap and then coming out and really performing however I can't imagine Peter hanging back on the start line or deliberately going slow - can you????
Currently Peter is in his diving gear cleaning our friends boat Valhalla. They will be in the non spinnaker division. This afternoon he will give Jura a wipe over to ensure we have no horrible, speed decreasing growth on the bottom then we move into the marina tomorrow. The wind is blowing a gale - doesn't blowing a gale sound extremely windy? We were discussing this a few days ago, a gale isn't actually that windy, 40knots, we have seen that multiple times over the past 7 months! There are many more levels above gale on the scale. Anyway it is particularly windy and has been the last few days. Whilst we are hoping for wind for race week this is probably a bit more then we want. We only have an asymmetric kite and don't think we could handle it much over 20knots, and we don't want any breakage's. Yesterday we broke another ronstan block! It isn't completely destroyed so we will be able to fix it up. Given the small amount of deck gear we have and how simple it all is, these breakage's are getting frustrating. These blocks are all ones that have been recommended to us by ronstan yet they are still not up to it.
Our first race starts on Saturday morning and we race down the Linderman Island and back. Last time we checked there were 89 boats in our cruising division. Apparently we will be broken into two divisions. All the divisions do the same course on Saturday so it should be quite spectacular. The wind really only blows from the SE at this time of year so it will be a work down south to Linderman then the kites will pop for the trip back. It gets quite rough when the wind gets up, especially in wind against tide conditions, hope everyone has strong stomachs :) In our division all races are around islands not marks, and there are 17 possible courses in the sailing instructions. Anyone good with their numeral pennants? Should be great fun. I think Peter is most looking forward to the first lay day when one crew member is allowed to test drive an Audi R8. Apparently this is a car which Top Gear raved about.
Cruising boats are now discussing the return trip south. Our Tasmanian friends on Beagle 3 are leaving Airlie Beach this week so spose once race week is over we will also be hoping for northerly winds so we can head south. We still have a few things to do around this area; we are planning a walk to the highest peak, and haven't got an underwater photo of the huge mauri wrasse so will need to snorkel Manta Ray Bay again yet. Then we will slowly make our way back. We missed alot on the way up and can't wait to get to Great Keppel, Lady Musgrave, Fraiser. With the bank balance looking a bit sad we will need to try and find some work over Christmas. I've decided to stop making plans as we never seem to complete them so we'll just see what happens.
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