The Tune-Up Race

From Thursday until Saturday, the fleet continued to congregate at the Durban Naval Shipyard. In total, 34 boats arrived from locations all over the country and from overseas. Weighing, measuring and launching took place on Friday and Saturday, with the fleet safely moored together outside Point Yacht Club by the evening of Saturday. Sunday would see us finally out on the water.

Despite expectations of summer in Durban, Sunday was grey and drizzly, more in keeping with Birmingham than South Africa. Spirits remained high however, regardless of any (or many and varied) excesses from the night before. The fleet did a sail past in the morning with spinnakers flying. Almost all had new 'chutes and there were "interesting" choices of colours from a lot of the competitors, with Tony Money on Jabberwock going for a kind of snot green and Jessica Lenz on Pottz Soft Play sporting a particularly luminous puke-yellow example. We were reserved and stylish (as always) with a muted grey and red.

After this we were out of the harbour for a tune-up race. As the competitors lined up, it was clear that competition was going to be fierce. Many of the crews were conducting mysterious drills and practice exercises (at least, they were mysterious to us) before the start as they got their first taste of sailing offshore.

The first start had to be aborted following starts varying from the amibitious to the the frankly ridiculous. Everyone was innocent, of course, but all sailors are. The second start was cleaner and we were able to pound our way up the course through the rising swell. At the front, gauntlets were being thrown as the defending champions from Holland, Het Branche Bureau (HBB)/SLAM skippered by Jeroen van den Boer and Orion Express skippered by Mark Sadler duked it out. Mark was first around the windward mark and held his lead until the bottom of the course.

At the gate, the two leaders split with HBB/SLAM heading along the beach and out to sea. Jeroen had spotted a change in the tide as he rounded the mark and ended up leading by a significant margin at the start of the second lap. So much for local knowledge. They held their position until the end of the race showing that relieving them of their title was going to be an uphill battle.

For the rest of the fleet, this was very much a learning process. Jumping Jive, skippered by Dale Kushner was eventually third, followed by First Ascent/Greenlight (David Hudson) and, fresh from the Americas Cup on Schozaloza, Ian Ainslie on Eikos. The remainder came through in dribs and drabs as the extent of the challenge before them became apparent.

Sunday evening saw the now traditional welcome from the hosting club commmodore and the J22 SA Chairman, Graham Baker. The latter was on his usual belligerent form as he stoked up the noise in the dining room. He also decided that each crew had to introduce themselves with some sort of amusing anecdote. These varied from the touching to the vaguely obscene, the variance appearing to be down to the amount of "refreshments" the crews had consumed.

Next: The Storms.....

The Story So Far....

Tuesday 18th December

After six days here in Durban, we are still waiting for the first official race to take place!! Over the past couple of days, the wind has been regularly gusting up to 45 knots and this, along with the destruction of the moorings, mean that we are unlikely to race until tomorrow.

Crews are amusing themselves in any way that they can. Boats have been fettled, beer has been drunk and rubbish has been spoken - pretty much an average regatta then! Four races in total need to be sailed in order for the regatta to be classed as official and it is hoped that we will definitely get that.

The event started for Windgat last Thursday morning at 0400. Being a fine and upstanding member of society, I was unaware that there was actually a 4am as well as a pm. Paraphrasing Robin Williams in "Good Morning Vietnam", what does the "0" stand for? 0 my God, it's early. As expected, on arrival at TYC, neither Steve nor BJ were ready. However, after much chuntering on the part of the small, hairy fella, we got the boat hitched up and were on our way.

Those of you that know us from previous regattas will be unsurprised to hear that the journey did not pass without incident. After a fuel stop, the Land Rover started to judder and swerve rather unpredictably. Fearing that this was a recurrence of the famed Solihull "reliability", we pulled over as soon as we could. It turned out that a wheel bearing on the trailer had failed. Cue colourful profanities from our skipper. With three wheels on our wagon, we continued on our way.

We actually made it to Durban ahead of schedule and, after picking up an indecipherable map from Point Yacht Club, we made our way to the Naval yard where measuring and weighing were to take place the following day. After touring most of Durban trying to find the place, we were eventually spotted by Dom Provoyeur and Penny Alison from MACS. Despite (or maybe because of) being German, they had rather efficiently discovered the yard already and guided us in.

To be continued......