Kit Guide

Summer on it's way?

We had our first evening club race last Wednesday, which makes it seem that summer can't be far away, even though you can still see snow on the hills. And when the tide goes out, there can be a noticeable drop in the water temperature as all that melt water makes it way downstream. We had a very interesting and unusual race as seconds before the 5 minute gun went, the wind changed 180 degrees, so we had a running start, which confused me as I couldn't decide if the wind was going to return to it's original direction or not and in the end I was too conservative and came off the line too high, leaving a very broad reach to what used to be our windward mark. But with everything back to front we had a big long beat up the middle of the Forth channel, with nice waves and a great breeze maybe up to 17, 18 knots, then a fantastic full power broad reach back to the startline. Which was broad enough not to need the toe straps, nice when I'm not as fit as I should be just yet. I've got my race officer duty this Wednesday and I'm going to seriously consider deliberately setting the race backwards. It's so refreshing to do something different every now and again.