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Saturday dawned after a big Friday night out in town with Richard and other miscellaneous joiners in. The main point of note is that Richard knows everybody in Marylebone. Angus arrived in Hemel from Strasbourg at, no wait for it, 2.20am. So when Angus and I arrived in Hamble at lunchtime (having shopped) we were a little jaded, Elaine arriving at about the same time. The main mission for the day was to play with the newly upgraded B&G gear in some waves, basically to see if we can get it to do what it says on the tin. The primary requirement for waves is wind, unfortunately wind was not something we had (stop it, ed). We retired to the sqaure rigger for lunch to consider our options. After considerable deliberation accompanied by ham, egg and chips we voted that shopping was a better bet than sailing (still little or no wind). After shopping I was several hundred pounds lighter, but do now have some rather nice gear for the Round Britain race next year...

Saturday night and Sunday morning followed a fairly normal template. Gin, boomerang, gin, bed, hangover. And guess what it was raining and nasty - what a surprise. The rest of the crew arrived on the boat: Russell and Tina (from Tina's dad's birthday all day drinking party) alarmingly chipper and slightly subdued respectively; Richard laconic, and Mike suffering slightly from a non-alcohol based complaint (mercifully not Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, which even in its mildest presentation can be a problem). Ready to roll.

Out to the start line, still raining, wind a SE F6, crew coiled like springs ready to unleash their boundless energy... Okay, so when the start sequence was postponed for half an hour to let the wind complete its swing into the west no one was complaining - time for an extra cup of life giving tea (and additional trips to the heads for all). But the the front had passed through, the sun came out, still pretty breezy at F5/6.

Fortunately we got a good start, front row, sailing away. Unfortunately we were slower than all our rivals. Much agonising post race has gone into why that was. The expert opinion was that we should:
i) Twist and flatten off the genoa more, to get less power that comes on more progressively (Ian from Quantum);
ii) My god, what's that growing on the bottom of your boat (X-Rated, and the rest of the fleet);
iii) You need to eat more pies (or find some additional heavy crew);
All in all worth about a knot of boatspeed upwind - which is what we were lacking.

Anyway the upwind stuff was fairly uneventful, save for the creature from the black lagoon. Richard being a diligent bowman was sorting out his strings after one of the downwind legs when circumstances required that we bear away to miss another boat. Unfortunately that resulted in a rather violent heel submerging Richard (who did apparently continue his tasks underwater). Fortunately Richard held on tightly, to emerge from the leeward rail dripping from head to toe looking slightly damp. Unfortunately Richard had swallowed a certain amount of the Solent which rendered him slightly moby thereafter. Sorry...

Downwind was really quite exciting. We held our spinnaker through squalls that took out other boats. The advantage of not being at the front was that we could watch other boats broach wildly in squalls we'd just survived. Nice! On the last downwind leg we were experiencing gusts of upto 22/23kn (F6) which was pretty hairy but no real problem. As the mark approached we found ourselves howling along at 11.5kn (for the uninitiated that is seriously fast) in a 28kn (F7) gust*. We were balanced, we were fast, were going to have to drop the kite or sail onto the beach. This is where our issues developed. Its in these conditions where a full crew of eight rather than six is helpful. That leaves the crew sailing the boat to get on with it as the others prepare for the drop - its pretty mission critical that the spinnaker trimmers, helm, main and kicker stay focussed on sailing... Well we proved what happens when you don't. Lets just say that I've not seen water lapping into the cockpit as the boat is on its side before. Memo crew: sheets blow before guys. Memo spinnaker halyard: you must not tie knots in yourself after having been carefully flaked. Memo crew recruitment division: need extra hands for manoeuvres.

*For those who did race #1 we had winds of 41kn (F9) lest anyone forget...

Had good time this week. Disappointed with the result, a very exciting sail, bit too emotional at times. Lawks, I had an excellent time, our heavy wind boat handling is improving...

Next week is the last race of the series. The forecasts are predicting light to fresh easterly winds. The smart money is on cold, quite light winds, maybe a tiny bit of sun... Bring it on.

Dave