Leaving it to the last minute
The 29er and 49er worlds are currently on in Melb (ok, technically Sorrento thoguh close enough). Without a boat I’m not there, and well even if I had a boat, I’m not sure that I would’ve been there anyway, sailing around in emerald fleet just doesn’t excite me very much.
So I’ve been checking the results very often to see how everyone is going, Nath and Ben appear to be doing very nicely (winning qualification and at present leading gold fleet), Clynton and Joe are normally pretty reliable when it comes to sailing in breeze, though they tend to struggle in the lighter stuff, which unfortunately they had for the first couple of days.
Late saturday arvo I was sitting in Borders reading what actually seems to be a pretty good book The Clean Tech Revolution when I got a call asking me if I’d like to sail an 18 on sunday. I’ve had a really sore shoulder/back for a few days (you know the one you get from the computer?) so I was a little hesitant, until
I found out that there was absolutely no crew and they needed to just get the boat on the water. So with the offer of the tiller and not much work for me I figured that my shoulders should be ok. Next problem, finding crew, my brother was an easy find and was keen for the bow, I had hoped for Matteo (who has been crewing for me on the 49er) though he wasn’t due back from Coffs until later sunday arvo… a couple of others didn’t pan out and it looked like we might be trying to find someone in the boat park before sailing.
Then suddenly Jonathan (who normally sails the boat though is in Melb for the 29er worlds) rings to let me know that he has found me a great guy for the main. Excellent, now I just hope that I don’t f**k things up for my first go at driving an 18.
We turned up quite early, hoping that we could get the boat right near the ramp… 18’s weigh a ton and need to be carried on your shoulders into the water, so obviously being closer to the ramp would be a GREAT idea. Sadly a heap of boats beat us to it and we were stuck with a few boats between us and the ramp. After a bit of messing about rigging and trying to get the mast straightish (I’m talking about the track being straight) out of the mast we managed to get it looking ok, despite arriving terribly early we were still last boat off the beach, oh well at least there wasn’t much blocking us getting to the ramp 
We went out and had a quick test set, gybe and drop then it was time for a start. Our aim for the day was really just to get across the start line, and try to keep the boat in one piece, fortunately with about 12-15 knot nor-easter it wasn’t going to be the most challenging conditions. We racked up right behind Seven at the starboard end of the the line (yes, wrong end for a nor-easter, but it was going to be pretty clean there). We had to tack away fairly shortly after the start, when we came back we were actually doing ok… not up with the front guys, though we were mixing it fairly well with plenty of boats in the B bunch. first reach we played it well and picked up a few boats. Lost some on the work and run before doing ok on the next work and reaches to finish (considering it was my first time driving, my brothers first time on an 18 and the boat was meant to be a full back marker) pretty well. Luckily Kurt was very good on the boat and really helped keep it going quick, and mostly in the right direction.
In the end we finished 16th over the line and 5th on handicap, so we were pretty happy 
It was suggested to put my name down for a boat for next season, I’ll give it some thought, though to be honest there must be good reasons why other people are so reluctant… it was great fun though logistically… for starters the little Peugeot won’t pull an 18… even if it had a towbar!
Filed by Popeye at January 7th, 2008 under Sailing