Sunderland GP

   Well now, the first part was easy dad drives up the A1 to Sunderland and we then put the past up. Simple! Well then the boat gets weighed.....hmmmmm not going to say much here but we are so far over weight its untrue.

      Then we were lifted into the water, if you ever get chance to watch this do it, dodgy as hell if I say so myself! Then off to the Marriott hotel, not bad price here twin room with breakfast for £90! So too the sailing!!!!! With no other than local legend Howard Stevenson on the helm, we weighed in 25kgs light(even after a dock off fry up!). So first race, ever in an SB3, and we rounded the windward mark 6th easy as pie! good hoist and rolled Jono Shelly on the first reach......seaming too easy here next reach we dropped 10 places!! couldn't get on a wave!! doh! Then to make matters worse i lost the kite in the water on a hoist..... tho looking back it seams like we were pulling the kite down in the wrong way, found out that it needs to come in from below the lowers. So on to the next race, Wind was up now too around 18 knots, again rounded the first mark fairly high up and did a good set hoists no errors but dodgy spinney work and main work didn't help here so again lost places off wind. Race 3 followed the same format second at mark one 11th at the finish.

      The sea state got worse over night and racing was abandoned for the day, just in time to watch the Monaco gp(we had sunshine and they had rain!!). Same story on the Mondays too, so we packed up and headed home. All in all a good event and I have learnt that my father spends a good hour looking at something and then saying its broken...... very frustrating!!!!

 

   Well a week off and then up to largs, oh and Sam Sutton is coming over this weekend (nice sober affair I feel!) My weight loss has been halted but should be back on track and I have an exercise ball now so you guessed it a new morning routine of an hour and a half is starting when I go back down to Plymouth.......

 

laterz

 

Jimmy