SaturdayDecent turnout. Fuzzy Logic, Antidote, Dan's Boat, Born Slippy, Dangerous Beans, Cheese Before Bedtime all turned up to a very, VERY windy Rutland. Cheese waisted no time in hitting the water. They were launching as I rolled in, pea style. There was lots of standing around in ocean sailing gear and chatting in between some serious precipitation. Several hail storms hit us hard and out of nowhere. Roland and Haley rigged Born Slippy, then derigged, and then rigged again, then broke a spreader which wrote off sailing sailing for the day.
Cheese was really sending it and giving the rescue boat a run for it's money. Top speed was at the top end of 19 knots. Paul first went out with Tim Unerman, followed by Will, followed by newbie John and I think followed by Tim again. Paul has clearly upgraded to Lithium batteries and got rid of those old alkalis! Showed the rest of us how to sail in breeze as usual.
Stu and Dan rigged Dan's Boat and got owned by the worlds worst timed 40mph gust. It went down hill from there and to cut a long story short the eventually got back on dry-ish land. Respect is due for launching.
Adem and I rigged Fuzzy which took several hours due to way to much faffing, chatting and watching Cheese burning around. We finally hit the water and promptly pissed it in when I hit the wire and the tiller extension came off simultainiously. Stu recovered it, taped it back on and we launched for the second time. We tacked over the topper squadies who were falling over left right and centre and shot off to the top of the lake. Several tiring capsizes later and we attempted to hoist the kite only to find that we had rigged it like retards. We capsized, righted the boat and headed for a bit of a wind shadow to attempt a second hoist hoping that it would have somehow fixed itself. It hadn't and no matter how hard I pulled the kite sheet it wasn't going to get any better. We capsized, righted the boat and made it back to shore survival style but at least it was under our own steam.
Team Elway did the sensible and went windsurfing.
Social was a well deserved pub dinner accompanied with several drinks for some, good chat and a chilli walk home.
SundayBeans and Cheese went home with perfectly legitimate reasons.
The Lake was a mirror but it just about filled in enough to twin downwind if you heated it up. Initially I decided against going sailing as it looked very much like I was foredeck bound. Everyone else rigged and went for a yacht. I let Adem and John take Fuzzy out for 'blast' and to my surprise they were actually moving. Stu and Dan came in and Stu very quickly convinced me to go out in Dan's Boat. The kite went up and we eventually got enough of a puff to twin so we sent it down the lake and shot passed some SB3's and Mustos floating about. I like Dan's Boat.
We managed to catch up with Fuzzy and they looked really good. It was great fun twinning it about with them. We weren't making much ground on them!
Antidote had a good day on the water and was sailed by both the Lee's and Team Elway. Most of the day was spent miles down the lake and they were just an orange glow on the horizon. The Lee's had spectacular kite run in the turbo-traffic-cone past the club house which was watched by everyone (you couldn't miss it!). Many jealous comments were made. Well played!
A cracking start to the season and I hope it's set the tone for coming events. Well done Stu for organising and well done to every who showed up!
