Day two was to be a set of round-the-buoys races. The committee completed two out of the three. Race one got us off to a modestly good start in delightful 12 knot breezes. We surged out toward the top of the course, taking nearly the left-most track in the hopes of best wind. This worked out fine, and the race committee had placed an offset mark at the top of the course, making for an orderly and leisurely gybe.
Our sets went up without too much difficulty and down we went toward the bottom of the course. But what’s that behind us? Australians! Yes, the Australian team has decided they want to pass us. This cannot be, these vegemite-eating, Fosters-swilling (really fun guys actually) must not pass. So we take them up, turning our boat (gradually and in a seaman-like manner leaving plenty of room for them to avoid us) to defend our wind.
Their spinnaker touches us “Contact,” we shout, and fly the dreaded red protest flag. “Rule 17” they reply and fly theirs. Whilst we squabble other boats sail by, and we all get back to racing. Australia finished about 15 minutes before we, it seems, so good on them for that. We ended up 18th in that race.
Race 2. Well, what can we say. David called a very nice start, placing us in the front rank of racers. Over time, however, the professionals on some of the other boats (including the Chinese Americas Cup team) managed to outpace us a bit.
Then we got to the very crowded windward mark. Coming in on port tack (which carries a few risks anyway), we tacked to round and lost our wind, and we missed the mark. Oh, shoot. I mean really, shoot.
So we complete a circle to get set up to build speed to turn around and try again. We see a gap in the boats lined up to round the mark and go to squeeze ourselves into the crowd for our second turn. We got into the crowd alright, but the boat had stopped moving.
Thunk. A Korean boat gently bounces off us. Thunk, another boat does the same, turning us and them before going off to sort of bonk another. We get bonked lightly by a third and a fourth boat. I cannot see Brett on the other side of the jib as he fends on his side and I fend on mine. I hear shouts which are in another language and are not clearly “Ouch my leg” or “Yahoo isn’t this fun!” It was more the Yahoo! NOBODY WAS INJURED and there were no damages to boats.
We calculated that we owed about 14 penalty turns and dropped out of the race. Later, we were told that two would have been fine, but we’d have ended up in the mid 20s anyway. Discretion, valor, etc.
On skippers orders, I dropped by the Aussie boat to make peace about the protests. They were all about peace. We sat on the boat for quite a while sharing stories and I even got to lead an “Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi OI” chant!
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