Racing and PFD's

We went racing yesterday, which didn't go according to plan. Actually, everything went completely wrong but we still had a blast. The sun was out, the wind was blowing and we had good company. Last week I got out all my beanies and onesies and winter snugglies, getting ready to battle winter as the days get colder and colder. But today the sun was out and it was actually warm - no thermals, no jackets, no neck warmers, just sunshine and sailing.

Racing is fabulous. I never thought I'd like it, but we signed up for a very casual race during winter last year to try and get some more experience sailing. There isn't really any other way to do it unless you have friends you can go out cruising with. How else do you get on the water? We wanted a lot of experience sailing and we wanted it asap. So we tentatively signed up for a bit of racing, just hoping to get a bit better at doing everything without thinking about it. We just wanted to go cruising - sailing along with a fishing line running off the back, soaking up the sunshine. But after that one race we were hooked. It was hard not to be, because our instructor is amazing - he gets so excited and has so much fun, there is no way you can step onto a boat with him and not have an absolute blast. So we signed up for a proper racing course straight away, and have been loving it ever since. Then we continued to love the regular race training we kept doing after our course finished, and all the races we've been entering as well.

This is the only picture I have of a race - we're always too busy doing stuff to take pictures. I was flying the kite.
We had lots more people in the cockpit today!

In fact, we have so much fun racing that every once in a while we toy with the idea of racing Heartbeat when we get her down here. And then we get a day like today and I make a mental note to only ever race in other people's boats.

Yacht racing is like racing most things - there's a starting gun and a starting line and a heap of rules and the first one back wins. However, you can't really all line up along the line and start when the gun goes - you have to keep moving around because yachts don't like to sit still. So there's a heap of boats all circling around the same area, figuring out which line they're going to take (which way they're going to go) and all trying to get in the best position to cross the starting line first. You get a five minute warning gun, then another at 4 minutes, and I think one at one minute. I'm usually just staring at the timer and calling out the time and don't pay much attention to what's happening around me.

Today, we pressed the button for the five minute countdown and it didn't work properly. No dramas, just do it again at the four minute gun. That didn't work either. So we had no idea what the countdown was, which meant we had no idea when the race was starting and when to head for the line. We were the last to cross it. Then it became very obvious that we were following the wrong course - everybody else started heading a different way (you get a course number for the race, look the number up in a book and it tells you where you have to go. There's usually a few different marks and you have to go around them in a specific way). So that wasn't ideal. It's much nicer being at the front of the pack than at the back - you get to look back at all the boats sailing together and it's really pretty.

The kite flying, still in one piece

So we sailed well and made up a lot of the distance we lost and everybody was chipper. Then we had a kite run home. A kite (or spinnaker) is a massive sail that you fly at the front of the boat when you're sailing downwind, and it makes you go way faster. Unfortunately, the kite we were using was old and the wind was quite strong - I think it must have just been it's time to go, because during a gust the whole thing ripped along the tape on the side and trailed behind us in the water. Again, not ideal. It ripped so easily as well - I've seen kites and sails get little rips in them before, but this thing was in pieces. It's a scary thought that a sail can be torn up so quickly. I dread the day it happens to one of our little sails.

So that was our race for this week. I wish it had gone better, but it could have gone worse and we had so much fun. The most useful part of the day was after the race when we were all chilling out getting dressed. Most people that sail a lot have awesome little PFD's (personal flotation devices, or life jackets) that are just a bit of thin material sitting over your clothes. They don't get in the way and you hardly notice them, unlike the giant yellow puffy things most people think of when they think of life jackets.

We haven't had ours for long and haven't really played around with them much. We got to talking about what they look like when they're inflated, and one of the lovely girls who was on our boat insisted we inflate hers to see what it's like. I'm way too cheap to ever want to do this myself - the jackets have a little canister inside them that blows it up when you pull a cord, and you have to replace it in order to use the jacket again. I think they're only around $20, but I still wouldn't want to waste $20 for nothing. I highly recommend everybody spend the damn $20 and do this at least once.

I've never really thought about it, but when you actually get into a situation when you need to pull the cord, you're scared and floating around in the water and everything is chaotic and you don't know what's going on. It would suck to add a scary thing blowing up around you and not having any idea what to expect when it happens. It was awesome! The thing just explodes and suddenly you're surrounded with puffiness. It's really cold too, which I didn't expect. It's from a combination of science and the canister exploding, but the jacket itself is ice cold for a while and so is the canister. A heap of trinkets kind of popped out as well - there's a little torch, a whistle and a deflating thing all wrapped up inside it. They're designed so well! I'm really glad I actually know how they work now, and where to find all the little bits. She showed us how to deflate them, pack them up again and replace the canister, which was really nice of her. So I'm now going to sleep with a little bit more knowledge in my brain than when I woke up. That's always a plus.



Love and best wishes,
Monique.