Not great weather for this event. A northerly which as you know tumbles down over the hill at the back of the club and repeatedly every few minutes produces a southerly just off the club and the occasional westerly or easterly at random intervals. It's only when you get halfway across the river that you actually get a northerly for more than a burst of 10 seconds duration. That turbulence carries off downwind and affects pretty much the whole of the reach between the club and Gillingham Marina. It's stronger with more northerly at the Gillingham end and lighter and less predictable the closer you get to the club.



We started the racing at high tide so for the first lap of the first race all we had to deal with was the wind. Every lap and every race after that brought stronger contrary flow on the beat making it essential not to tack straight up to the windward mark which was 31, but to tack across on port to get into the slacker current to the right of the rhum line.



You can imagine what the starts were like, since a starboard tack through the line took you out into the contrary flow. The only good start would be right by the Committee Boat so that you had freedom to tack away on port to the slack water. All the good guys were there battling it out. It was OK on the first race but by the third it was essential to be there or you were soon behind everybody. I suppose the faster boats had an advantage because they 1. could stem the flow more effectively and 2. could pull enough ahead to get a tack onto port even if they didn't make the optimum start.



Add to this the unstable nature of the wind, where you could be headed (briefly) and dumped in backwards, or lifted making a tack useless at crossing the boats behind and thus ducking everybody making your start go from brilliant to hopeless in one gust. Yes challenging conditions, and grey and not that warm.



Of course the cream rises to the top and we were shown the way to do it by George Smith from Bough Beech who won 2 of the three races. Fortunately he (being a visitor) didn't qualify and so Brian Lamb, very ably crewed by Sam, sailing John Goudie's Wayfarer won the competition.



For myself, I was really only concerned with the other Blazes. Martin Jones seemed to have the legs of Nick Lett in the first race (when it was really quite windy at the bottom of the course) but Nick got past him by the finish. I was well behind and I'm not sure what I did wrong to come somewhere in the middle of the field. In the second race I was doing quite well – but seriously well behind Nick Lett – when I got slammed just before I was due to gybe. That put me back quite a bit as I went in to windward, had to swim around to the other side of the boat, heave it up only for it to go right over the other way, requiring another swim around and then pull it up so that I could get going. In spite of that I did better than the first race but was comprehensively beaten by Nick Lett. For the third and final race I was pretty knackered having had another capsize whilst trying to get a drink from my bottle between races. I didn't get that perfect start which by now the strong tide made essential but I did manage to get onto port and cross the slower boats and get out of the tide to find myself not a huge distance behind Nick who was mixing it with Altos and other fast boats. I rounded buoy 31 not a great distance behind Nick but he caught a gust and zoomed off downwind and I caught a lull and had to get right onto the foredeck to get any downwind speed where because of the favourable tide for downwind sailing I went most of the way downwind with the lull. Nick was gone but that Wayfarer of Brian Lamb was nearby. That was my battle for the rest of the race – keep Brian behind me – which I only just managed but on handicap that is not good enough.



So the whole affair was a tough challenge (at times just to stay upright). It was enjoyable of course but such a shame, it could have been so much better. I'm not blaming the Race Officer though. It must have been quite a challenge for him to get something out of an unpromising situation. Thanks must go to the volunteer safety boats of course but also to Isabelle Hill and Chris Saunders on the Committee Boat who must have been quite a help to John Goudie in his most difficult task.