No Wind

The strangest of sails. I’d offered myself up as crew to JA for the Wickes Stern Chase. Come 12 midday it was flat calm. The race officer (yes, the RO – this was serious stuff it was FCYC vs RFYC) blew the whatsit and first boat (Decantae) attempted to move towards to the start line. No joy. A slight rising tide may have got them there eventually, so the RO announced a postponement. Thirty two minutes. And blow me, just five minutes before the new start time the wind picked up – round from the NE. Laden with rain. And it picked up more – off we rushed, seven minutes behind the starting boat. 
It's a stern chase y’see – the idea being after 90 minutes you ought to all arrive at the finish line at the same time. With so many different classes of boats it’s all about handicaps and so a bit of a lottery. We dug in and did pretty well – poor JA has lost a lot of strength in one of his legs (an age thing) but he’s a competitive old fart and we held off Misty Blue*….just until … bugger… they got past us in the last minute. Home to dry out.
And briefly up to see the daughter and nippers. A joy to sit and play with the wee twosome as I sensed a sadness descending after the race. Got to keep moving.


*they win everything so all we cared about was beating them