Today was a long day for the people working the committee boats as well as for the racers, as most classes at the Heineken Regatta had to complete two races. We met up as usual at 7AM at the yacht club and then headed out to our committee boat “B” in order to set up and prepare in time for the first scheduled start at about 10AM. The conditions at sea were somewhat more moderate than the previous days, but it was still blustery out there and many boats had set reefs in their sails.
Luckily our start line was set up just inside Simpson Bay in the neighborhood of the airport, so we were protected from much of the swell while at anchor, but the constant unpredictable motion of the boat made identifying boat numbers on the start line with binoculars rather difficult and despite both Mark and myself scanning for numbers we were not able to identify several of the starters before they were to far away for any positive identification. Fortunately we had no bad starts that we were unable to verify numbers for this day.
Both courses were set to be relatively short and the boats we sent out did remarkably well given the boisterous conditions. Only one boat came back with a torn genoa although several boats did call in on the VHF to inform us that they were retiring from the race.
It was very difficult to stay awake after we’d returned, I was knackered from being aboard the catamaran and the burning in my eyes from the sunscreen didn’t help at all. I went ashore to get some more milk for my morning coffee and had one drink at Barnacle’s before returning to the boat and informing Mark that I wouldn’t be joining him for the party at Kim Sha beach that night. I made a pasta dinner and tried to read but by 22:00 I was dead tired and slept well until they turned the volume up at about 02:30 in morning. My whole boat was vibrating to the bass beat from the speakers at Kim Sha and it took a long time for me to get back to sleep and on any other night I would have done the “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”.