Champagne Sailing - Almost...

I got down to Hayling on Sunday for a bit of time sailing somewhere that doesn't involve forests of weed growing up from the bottom of the lake and it proved to be well worth it.

Axebridge is normally mostly empty of water at this time of year as it is a reservoir for Bristol Water Co, so I dont usually have to worry about the weed as theres not enough water to sail anyway. Yet I keep trying. Hopefully as the weather is starting to cool off now these underwater trees should start dying off and normal service can resume.

So anyhow, sailing down at HISC is great, the launching is pretty easy, there is nice soft sand to rig up on rather than concrete and there is a fleet of top guys all floating around to gauge performance against... Mike Lennon and Jason Russell were both out sailing first thing so we attempted a bit of a windward/leeward race that was going on at the time. Mike and myself were pretty evenly matched for pace in the marginal postitions, both taking off at a similar sort of speed and doing similar angles upwind and down. The race was mostly seperate by which holes you managed to sail into.

Tim Boon came out and joined us, which killed the wind pretty nicely, so we headed in for lunch. After an hour of chillin' out the breeze kicked back in again and we went out to play. Dave from Dynamic sails took my boat out for a spin and started getting his gibes in, although it did reveal from the shore that my boat was flying a little too high and he kept getting the rudder into the air and spinning out!

I got out to make the most of the breeze and my foil tacking is as close as it has ever been now - Just in time for the Powerman Poole bay race next Sunday that Rodders is getting us all worked up about...