Sunshine, Lollypops and Rainbows

“Gone Troppo” flying past “Heaven Can Wait” just after the start of the first race
It would seem that size does not matter under these circumstances!

“Quest” crew swaying in the breeze

More photos can be found here

The first race of the 50th St Helena Cup is what you would best describe as a “Character Building”.

It was a challenge, it was interesting, it was frustrating, it was downright annoying, but at the end of the day is was yacht racing, so regardless of all those things, it was an awesome day out on the water.

The breeze started out as the perfect 10 to 15 knots from the SSE, however just to mix things up, a rain cloud decided to peak it’s ugly head from the horizon causing every breath of air to ease away to an empty nothingness.

We were still, we were silent, we were bewildered…

We were parked in a 2 hour zone whilst almost every other yacht in the fleet seemed to be cruising the Autobahn.

But then the world flipped, tilted, rotated, did a little dance but gave no love because we managed to go from sailing (sorry, drifting) upwind… to gybing!!!

The call for Beer was ordered in an effort to ease the pain of watching the smaller boats pass us.

Eventually we managed to release ourselves from the depth of total disgrace and fought back hard so that we could at least show our faces in the bar.

Ok, it wasn’t all that bad, but there was a moment in time where we were actually sailing faster… backwards!

But that’s not where it ended… Oh no… Our plan was to race as hard and as fast as we could in an effort to beat the lowest tide so we could put the mighty Quest to bed for the night. However due to our reverse sailing techniques, which are not recommended in the future, we had to bail out some 50 meters from reaching the entrance to the harbour, otherwise I would still be out there now watching the sunset over a crystal clear afternoon.

But the crew enjoyed the chance to swing off the boom in an effort to heel to leeward so the three meter draft didn’t anchor us into the muddy, grassy, rocky sea bed.

Race two tomorrow I’m sure will promise to bring just as much excitement to the crews as today’s race but heres hoping that we have good, consistent pressure instead of everything ranging from sunshine, lollypops and rainbows.