phuket raceweek day 4

Last day of racing the weather is settling down 10 to 15 knots and we have 2 new victims, will the succumb to the chunder from down under??

We had a great little course for the mornings race sailing between the islands we rounded channel markers off the Evason resort and further down the bay conditions were a little shifty but the breeze held its strength at 12 knots most of the day. We had a good first race which saw some technical manoeuvres by our team a good first set had us charging down the first run and caught up 2 places with an early gybe into the mark taking a nice wind shift and setting up nicely for a kiwi drop round the mark. again we headed upwind. At the final upwind mark the wind was in the right so we decided to do a gybe set with no spinnaker pole at the top. it all went smoothly the kite set we all looked up to see the logo on its side. the kite was hoisted on the clew not the head. the camera boat was snapping away and we all turned to our bowman. "Your shout tonight."

We quickly dropped it in the deck and switched the head for the clew and re hoisted the kite. second time lucky. it didn't cost us too much and we carried on to the finish with our tails between our legs but knowing we had sailed well apart from the one mistake.

In the afternoons race we had another windward leeward. the breeze was dropping a little 8- 10 knots. with our number 1 jib we were charging to the first mark in touch with the big boats. we felt sure that this was going to be our race. we sailed well changed gears when the wind was light and had great crew work. on the final run to the finish we had a dieing breeze below 5 knots and the clock was ticking against us. We had sailed so well and stayed so close to the bigger yachts in our division but it proved not good enough as we placed 4th in the final race.

The crew has come so far in the week. In the beginning they were asking questions about all manoeuvres and wanting to be told what to do all the time. by the final day they were making their own decisions jumping to attention to help out when others needed a hand and really using initiative to make the boat go fast. It was great to be apart of a crew that wanted to have fun and work hard to achieve a good result.

cheers endeavour of Whitby see you at the next regatta.

PS check out the jetty we had to contend with every day it caused some pretty funny situations as you could imagine!