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.....