Cork Week Day 3 - the Aussie View
'Cork Week 08 - part of the fleet'
Ingrid Abery © Copyright
Cork Week Day 3 - The Aussie View.
We haven't been featuring too prominently in the results so the crew decided to adopt a different tactic after racing yesterday and quite literally take out the opposition. An English yacht called Anticipation is coming first in our division and when we bumped into them in the bar last night our lot decided to show them how Aussies party. They all headed out to the pub where beer challenges chorus's of Waltzing Matilda and a late night ensued but the crew assure me that they were only doing it for the good of the team.
We headed out to the Olympic Course this morning with most of the crew feeling distinctly un-Olympian - the wind was pretty fickle and for a short while it seemed that we were going to have a postponed start, but a nice 12 kts kicked in from the west and the crew that had sidled off for a nap were routed out of their bunks and on deck for an exciting start.
The antics of the night before didn't seem to affect our hardy Australian crew, in fact it seemed to improve their performance. The crew work was faultless, a silent boat at the starts, good calls from the rail and perfect gybes were the order of the day as we completed the first of our triangle, loop, triangles. The Irish wind and our shoal draft boat let us down again though as a dying wind on the top mark and a racing tide saw us having to do a late tack which as good as stalled the boat and had us following the fleet once more.
A short delay after the first race allowed us to have a quick lunch before the wind kicked back in, from the southwest this time, and we were off again. There was excitement on the start line as one poor skipper seemed to have rudder issues and started going around in circles right on the start line. His and our skippers very skilful handling of the situation meant that we narrowly avoided a t-bone and were off over the start line before anyone else realised what happened.
We had a fantastic race, we finally got the boat moving and our crew work really paid off at last. Oh and the english crew had another successful day!
Another amazing day at Cork, it's the slalom course tomorrow, should be interesting!
Check out our crew on www.manlysailing.com.au/racing
And find out more about our sponsors on www.blackheart.com.auand www.suuntowatches.com
by Anne Hog
MORDIALLOC, VIC
