It seems like a very long time but was only the 18th of March when we competed in our last race before COVID restriction regulations hit. In the mean G-whizz  has not been idle, fortunately for us in Sydney, within all of the permitted activities that allowed people to leave their accommodation, there was sailing and fishing. The equipment list on G-whizz  now includes a couple of fishing rods and a tackle box courtesy of Ann’s father and in our wallets are freshly minted fishing licenses.

The rules dictated that two co-inhabitating people (or family) could take exercise in the form of sailing but were not permitted to anchor, however fishing was also a permitted activity. Problem solved; sail during the day then anchor and fish at night, the only casualty to all of this was a substantial  leather jacket (a beautifully coloured fish by the way) that Ann caught with a prawn head for bait, hopefully  he survived the ordeal and is a bit more selective when he next snacks on prawn components.

Back to the racing, two weeks ago on the 14th of June we  competed in tbe first of the West Harbour Winter Series since lock down rules were relaxed, it was great to have friends back on board and sail on what was a beautiful day on the water, while we missed the start by about 90 seconds, well we are out of practice, unfortunately our competitors were in practice, after racing without a spinnaker we finished 5th across the line about 30 seconds from third, we were a bit slower than our handicap though where we finished 7th on PHS.

The forecast was not great for today’s race, over the last few days it changed from sunny and no wind to rain  and 10 to 15 knots, although it also depended on which forecast program you looked at, it turned out to be a pretty good day, the rain held off and the wind varied between almost nothing to 15 knots, although most of the time it was in  the area of 4 to 8 knots.

The race started in very light air, incredibly the entire fleet hit the line at almost the same time and were spread of over the entire length of the start line, and that’s pretty much the way it stayed for most of the fleet for the entire race, KoKo the Elan 37 just got further a head as the race progressed, somehow Guwara a Hanse 350 also made a break, we were either smart enough or lucky enough to pick the wind off Birchgrove and were a able to put some distance on the rest of the fleet.

KoKo  just got further ahead but we were running down Guwara, if the course had been 100 meters longer we may have beaten them into second place as it was they beat us into second place by 7 seconds. Third on scratch and fifth on PHS, not a bad day out.

I should mention that it’s good to be back.