Racing

Our first hit out on the Harbour began on satday at SFS racing against Flipper and Ian in a lite easterly and big rig, with me Sam and Benny enjoying a lovely day getting back into Sydney Harbour mode... looking for ferries, breeze and the assorted day cruisers and yachties while just generally staying out of trouble... unlike Flipper who managed to clean up a poor unsuspecting kayaker(pics to come)

So a perfect day for testing the latest changes and so far so good, the team is sailing very well together and with some more changes this week from Neil at Barracouta Sails we are definitely all very happy with the results... although Flipper did just get us at the finish, but overall a nice first day of racing(pics to come soon)

Big thanx again to our team support sponsor Timmy and Kylie from All About Tanks... link here. http://allabouttanks.com.au/ for the great pics from the weekend and taking Leslie and Rors onboard the corporate yacht for a lovely harbour cruise... cheers guys

Then as pics above show the team made our debut for the season against the League guys on sunday for Heat 1 of the Aussies, and what a great day

although we didnt get a result due to some gear problems, me and the boys showed we are not slow... ye we are not fast either... but considering it was our first time racing with the small rig and I managed to get probably THE worst start possible at the pin end... we rounded the first mark in 12th and catching some boats downwind... both of which we never managed last season... Benny had to laugh when i asked to him to back off some kite horsepower so we didnt end up on some transoms of a few well respected League guys, and after some perfect gybes from Sam we rounded the bottom mark for the next upwind in similar positions and still infront of many boats we could only dream of staying with last year

Half way back upwind to the top mark we decided some rigging was not too happy and instead of destroying things completely we thought it was better to head back to SFS headquarters. So we learnt plenty from first race and know we can get more pace from the old girl yet... just more recuts, tweaks and changes from Neil at Barra

From my point of view it was not good to get a DNF... but on the flip side very happy how young Bendo and Sam performed under the pressure of racing the pros from the League in a solid 20knt N/E breeze with big run out tide... the perfect Sydney Harbour conditions

see what happens next weekend...

Oh... and well done to the Southern Cross guys for their win... although it seems the UK guys on Project One where leading all race and pitchpoled close to the finish line and broke their rig... very unlucky and lots of hard work to put it all back together for next weeks race... all that training and tuning 4 days a week for the past few months makes a huge difference... will be interesting to see what happens in the JJ Worlds... maybe a another international winner