Practice Race

Hi to all you dedicated followers, everyone starting to get back into regatta mode (parents included) with the practice race today. Spent the morning chilling a little and rechecking and setting up the boats, we caught up with our Honorary Kiwi friend Max and his family today also. The forecast was overcast with 12-15knots gusting 22knots which sounded promising, but never eventuated and maxed out at around 10knots . The kids were out on the water at 1pm with a 1.55pm warning signal, one of the interesting things about launching was that the kids were advised to wear something on their feet before they went into the water as there was weaver fish (I think that was what they called them) that lay on the sand and if you stood on them they would sting you. The race finally got underway at around 3 pm after several general recalls and postponements. The rain came in and changed the wind direction causing the race committee to change the course no sooner was this completed it stopped raining and the breeze swung back causing another postponement, hopefully this is not a sample of what we are going to see for the week. The Windguru forecast is showing it will be quite a light regatta with a couple of days at 2-4knots and picking up a little towards the end but nothing above 8knots, time will tell though. As I have found out practice races are something that is not taken to seriously, it is as much about the race committee making sure they are ready and the same for the competitors, most competitors seem to take the start seriously go to the top mark and from then on tend to pull out, some say it is not wanting to show everyone else to early who is good, others say it is bad luck to finish the race let alone winning it. Our guys did the top mark wing mark and pulled out at the bottom mark, Isaac and Markus were in one flight and Leonard in the other. All three of them were in the top 10 before pulling out which they were all happy about. There is about 150 boats entered in the senior fleet from 12 different countries so quite an international flavour. Leonard was asked to speak at the opening ceremony on behalf of the international sailors seeing as the NZ team had travelled the furthest. Racing starts tomorrow at 11am (10pm NZ), we have a rib so will be out on the water so keep an eye on facebook as I am sure Rob will be throwing live updates in there, for those of you who like your sleep I should have the blog up by around 9am NZ with a link to the results also. So back into it.

A few pics from today, Rob has a few more and will post them when we can get the internet to go for longer than 30 seconds.Getting ready to go out for practice race, you will notice the boys are wearing a few more layers than in previous regattas.

You will notice the small tent on the beach, no different from home in the summer! The difference is we use them to keep out of the sun, here they have them so they can jump in and stay warm!!

Ready for the opening ceremony.


I have put this down the bottom hoping no one will read it.

Every day that goes by seems to have a little drama in it and today was no exception, the only problem is I was involved in this one, so as I am writing about today I thought great no need to tell anyone, I have since been threatened with all sorts of punishment if I don't write something. Went something like this...

We were sitting in the yacht club today when we get a txt from the coach saying kids on way in. Great we start heading for the beach. Once we get there we see the junior fleet coming in and possibly one of the senior fleets behind them. Rob was in jandals and I was wearing shoes. As you would have seen by yesterdays photos the tide goes a long way out, so Rob volunteered to go down and see the kids coming in I would look after the jandals and help them up the hill once they got back. Rob set off and I headed up the beach a bit to the dry sand and sat down, I pulled out my phone and checked a few txts etc etc, maybe 5-10min went by while I was doing this. I then got up and walked back down to where I was previously. It got down to about 20 boats left to come in, about 3/4 hour has passed now, I thought to myself typical our guys are out there playing silly buggers and will be the last in. I then here a whistle, I thought that sounds a lot like Robs whistle so I turned around and sure enough there he was standing up the beach, I went up to him and asked how did you get up there thinking he must have got a ride around in a rib or something. But no as it happens on his way down the beach to see the kids he was met by them coming up one of the first off the water, they got back up to where I was couldn't see me or the jandals