Race Day 2
Conditions for racing were much better today, with higher winds and bigger seas. Our committee boat set up at the Rendezvous start and all went well until the radio chatter started picking up with disconcerting communications. The first was a competitor with a suspected cardiac arrest and a MAYDAY call to ABSAR. That got sorted out and the patient was transferred to the ABSAR rescue boat and transported to an ambulance ashore at Falmouth Harbour. Then we had a person overboard situation at the finish line and this was more difficult to deal with as the person on the other end was under much more stress. It turns out that the person overboard was not only the owner but also the skipper! But those comms were soon switched over to ABSAR and that situation, too, was handled with a positive outcome. The last was a non-life threatening injury (I later found out that it was a broken ankle) where to boat wanted a soft RIB to come by and remove the injured crewmember so that the boat could participate in the last race of the day. We were not in a position to offer assistance and also handed this one over to ABSAR.
I later spoke with ABSAR to find out that they had had 7 calls that day with only one of them not related to the ASW races. It was a busy day indeed for them on the water!
Apart from the injuries we had a number of equipment failures with boats retiring from the races but most, if not all, could be solved in time for the next race or the next day. The competitors were getting more and more aggressive on the start line but my job with the X-Ray flag remained as boring as that of the Maytag Man in old commercials. I never got to raise the flag. We were hit by a squall with a peak wind of 36 knots which caused us to drag a long way downwind. As our mooring consisted of an engine block we had the pin boat lift the smaller start line mooring and place that so that we once again had a start line square to the wind.
Although we were tired from the day’s work and we headed off to Trappas and had to wait a while before getting a table. And then came a long wait for our meals, with both Neil and Alec falling asleep and I couldn’t let Rosie stand guard duty all alone, otherwise I might have nodded off as well. The meal was worth the wait, though.