Tuesday practice

Tuesday at the Milford Cruising club saw more sailors arriving and getting their boats set up.  Rolling about on the grass underneath them, occasionally emitting profanities so extreme that birds literally burst into flame mid flight, as they drop a split pin into their eyeball or discover that their take-away bungee comes from the wrong side of that rope.

The lovely ladies in the club office discussed the numbers of pies they thought the sailors would eat in a day and how many could be crammed into the heater.  I told them to just double it to be safe.  The thought of a visiting sailor being deprived of a Steak & Cheese or a Butter Chicken pie simply doesn't bear thinking about.  The wind, on our sponsor PredictWind's app suggested that maybe it could be sailable around lunchtime so a few, Kuba and Hamish set off and were seen cruising about on the horizon.  Those all black sails (rather appropriate given where we are) are great for spotting from a distance.  I went down to the beach to take a wind reading and found it was 10 - 12kts, with a swell, but nowhere near the level of Monday's washing-machine conditions.  This was duly communicated to the gentlemen still sobbing under their boats as one had just got bitten by an ant and several made ready to get out to play.

I ordered my RIP to be readied forthwith by my man-servant, or David as his wife sometimes calls him.  Great lad to be fair, does all sorts of stuff and is one of the main organisers, in between sailing his A-Cat like a demon.  I then jumped aboard it to be driven in the manner of a Prince of the Royal Family, (but not that one..) to the beach for launching. The RIB was launched in a vaguely Keystone Cops manner and set off to for the black sail on the horizon.

The wind was pleasant, some 9-11 kts from the NNE and easily foilable. The great thing about training sessions, as a photographer, is that you don't need to worry about getting out of the way of boats closing in on you at 20 kts.  They all know you are there, and why, so before not too long they arrive upon you like you are a dead wildebeest on the savannah, and perform close fly-by's in the manner of TopGun pilots.  This gives the opportunity to get those photos that they know clearly impresses the ladies, with those full close head on foiling shots that would get you killed if it were during a race.  Emmanuel Dode and Michal Korneszczuk made the most of the opportunity for some crowd-pleasing shots.

Further up was Team Scheurer  with their new G8 boats.  These are new Classic designs, optimised with considerable input from Landy.  Fatter stern, neat deck recessed traveller, new traveller car, new thinner chord T rudders, the fat aero front beam seen on the later G6, the rear beam is raised above the tramp, as in the old Flyer design, and will prevent the mainsheet washing off the back, a common and hugely irritating issue we have all experienced in a big sea, a new design curved boom and gooseneck and nice new C boards.  The thing looks a total weapon indeed!  However, it's a Swiss made Scheuer, so, if you need to ask the price.... as they say. We'll see how they run next week, in anger.

The wind then started to drop off, 6, the 5, then 4kts when Landy and his team called it a day and headed beachward.

As it's already tomorrow here, we fear the wind may be similar, or even less.  Possibly picking up around Tea-time maybe?  Hopefully they can get more water and airtime again.  And one bit of good news, the club catering has started a day earlier, which is nice new indeed!