So the forecast was ugly. Since Monday I had been hoping that it would change, but no. The forecast was building to 20/30. Hopefully we would get out and get a race in before it came.

Arriving at the club, Luka and Kylie had already for a week off, and were playing around with their windsurfer. As it turned out, this was the smartest move of the day.

Dave, Phil, Andrew and I all headed out at 1:30 pm into a 18-20 knot breeze that was definitely building. With 5 mins to the gun, it arrived in earnest, and I took the gun and headed for shore, whilst I was still parallel to the club and not needing to head down wind.

Yes Dave, I was a pussy, and this is another one of those masturbatory-esque blog posts.

Anyway, back on shore I de-rigged and watched what followed.

By 2:30 The breeze had really filled in, Phil was leading Dave and then Andrew, passing to Phil the title of the fastest boat in Sydney. Then he disappeared. Andrew, then Dave arrived at the shore, with still no sign of Phil, who arrived under tow 30 mins later.

As it turned out no one finished. The funniest part of the afternoon was the debate of how strong it really was. The bets were on, Phil’s was “15-20″, Dave was “22-30″.

We grabbed an iPhone and here were the results :

Time                    Dir    Speed    Gust

07/01:30pm      NE      19       22 

07/02:00pm      NE     18       22 

07/02:30pm      NE     21       26 

07/03:00pm      NE     25       31 

07/03:30pm      NE     24       30 

07/04:00pm      NE     26       31 

07/04:30pm      NE     29       35 

So the winner, Dave by a whisker, then the debate turned to “the BOM isn’t accurate …”

As for me, I got the same result as everyone else, and I get to have another boat work free week. Now If only I could get 20 hours or so in 15 knots to learn to sail the thing. At the same time if I could get some kind of setup that would be nice. Until that happens, it looks like I will be still regularly be eating Whiskas when the gauge gets on the high side of 20.