BALA LONG DISTANCE RACE AND REGATTA

JULY 4/5 1998

After all the effort from our beloved leader to encourage attendance at open events this year we were a bit disappointed that only two visitors came to join the two North Wales boats at Bala for what is always a splendid weekends sailing. However for us, the regulars at this event, it was great to see peoples eyes having a double take on the boats as the FD fleet formed its usual corral on the lakeside by the entrance to the club. Also really good to see the two new boats on display rather than just our somewhat faded glory.

A smaller than usual fleet of 60 boats frenzied around the startline for a mass start with Julian and Cathy kicking sand in the faces of some small fry for a cool committee boat end start, John and James opting for the classic third of the way down the line ‘peace and quiet and we can go faster than anyone else once we’re out of here’ approach while Tony and Colin adopted the ‘farmyard’ start - up to their necks in manure - what a rotten, rotten shame for them.

After coming off the line and comfortably crossing JB - We are writing this so we get to soak up as much glory as we can - just after the start, we watched them disappearing to the right and snuggling up against a hill by the shore. Good move, as the windbend they had predicted took them a good couple of hundred yards into clear space in very little time at all, leaving us fighting with the leading 505s and Javelins, and Tony and Colin working their way through the GP 14s with wooden masts. Four miles later the positions were similar, except that John and James were specks in the distance as they rounded in the lead, we were second, and Tony and Colin had dug themselves out of the manure and were arguing with the mid fleet fireballs, nice to see the traditions of the Bala weekend upheld by first timers.

The downhill bit took us from the low latitude of the long distance mark back to the outlying club race marks for a sparkling set of reaches and runs to the club. John and James’ new Banks kite with shoulders like a shotputter had taken them further into the lead, while Tony and Colin were gradually filling the rear view mirror. We were about fifth on the water, watching an International Canoe sailor wearing a crash helmet pretending to be an extra in an early flying movie, with various other traditional fast dinghies around and about. There was a zero appearance from the modern world, the only asymmetries attending were the extremely fast cherubs. The breeze had built to a good clew two (Felinheli scale) now and we lost out to fat 505 teams beating back up the lake. It eased again for the downhill on this lap, but was very patchy, dark gusts looking after some while others wallowed. Tony and Colin had certainly caught up loads, and were looking threatening as we got down to the bottom to see our heroes on the beach. They had obviously had a gear failure as we could see them hitting the boat rather than each other. We had a minor one too as the guy cleat mounting developed a speed governing device, twisting forwards to release the guy in the gusts, Great, thats never happened before, so firstly we are still pushing back the frontiers of mad bastard reaching, and secondly its happening here rather than in Holland. Now seriously blasting back up the beat rather than just sailing, with buckets of twist in the main and the genoa right at the howling end of clew two, we got a gust and Julian reached for the traveller to open the door and let it out. There was a horrible graunching and pinging and Julian collapsed into the boat almost totally immobilised with a set of mid back muscles in spasm. Get rid of the genoa, and with Cath on the mainsheet and Julian sitting on the floor wedged against the side tanks, we hobbled back to the beach. (and Cath reckons she could have sailed back really) Tony and Colin swept past as the sole FD survivors while John and James helped us off the water.

Both John and James, who had suffered from failure of the lashing holding the genoa head to the luff wire, and us, after Julian had driven, unable to walk that far, the whole 200 metres back to the campsite for a shower, watched as Tony and Colin came in to finish 25th on handicap. The RO later told JB that they were leading by over half a minute, on corrected time, when they retired.

While Julian took the much needed hot shower to ease his back, Cathy took advantage of the generous offer from God to take a ride on the new Biggles with a life. This took the form of a rapid beat halfway up the lake, necessitating rather relaxed tacks due to the genoa cleats being the other way up from that Cathy is used to, followed by a series of reaches ranging from the "ye gods why doesn’t James have ratchet blocks" to the more civilised broad reaches which enabled Cathy to see just how broad the shoulders of JBs new kite were. JB was a perfect gentleman who obviously knew just how to handle a woman but Cathy says that despite the excitement of a one night stand she prefers the long term relationship with Julian! You could tell it was a new boat from the feel of it, stiff with all the fittings working perfectly, however, all the controls the crew needs to use were rather different to the Bridges boat (either the other way up, in a different place, or somewhere only James could possibly reach!).

Much later, after the boats were put away, the happy campers met up with Tony and Colin at the pizza place in Bala town for an evening of discussing: the future of the FD class in the UK, Dutch beer, genoa leech tensions, the future of the FD class in the UK, the RYA, mainsail leech tensions, the future of the FD class in the UK, and fantasy waitress undressing.

On Sunday morning with the weather breezy and grim and the regatta timetable based around the sailors of Birmingham rather than those with long distance travel ahead of them, all except one decided to call it quits, with the only FD sailing being Richard Austin who had got in a muddle with crews the previous day, and had pressganged Jim Morris the previous evening back at Cath Goodwins houswarming party in Felinheli. They hurtled round the first race until it all went green, with Jim losing the trapeze adjuster and running block while in the water. It was great to see them out at an open event rather than just down at our club

Lessons?!

After a carefully structured, informative and stimulating debriefing session held in the bath later, we decided that

1 If JB and James want to be international megastars then they need to address focussing on uprating the priority status of their boat maintenance checking operational system functionality performance indicators.

2 If Tony and Colin were to start in the same parish as the rest of the fleet we’ed all be in trouble.

3 If Richard Austin knew what day it was, even occasionally, he could have a lot more fun FD sailing

4 If Julian wants to race FDs into middle age then less of taking girls out for lunch, and more of some form of fitness programme, at least once the pub is shut.