Welsh Open Racing – Freerace report
The early May Bank Holiday weekend has become the favoured date for one of the more popular events on the UKWA race calendar, located in the picturesque landscape of Snowdonia, a mere 330 miles from the South Coast where many of us reside.
Distance wise, Pwllheli is no farther than Marazion, yet it always seems to be twice the distance and as such some serious logistic plans are made to add days on either side of the event for adventures on the road and recovery time.
2005 allowed no such luxuries with family friends seeing fit to tie the knot on the Saturday and enlisting the trouble and strife as a matron of honour to ensure excuses could not be conjured up for escape to North Wales. Plan ‘B’ was duly instigated and Mel’s new car was stripped of it’s people carrier luxuries and turned into a van before being loaded with my formula kit and an inflatable bed, some scoff and a change of clothes or two.
Friday saw no early departure, just frantic last minute wedding stuff going on. Saturday was to be the big day, sadly not as in day one of the UKWA Welsh Open, but the wedding. Shan’t bore you all too much with details, but it went well, with yours truly left in charge of getting the three girls, and myself, to the church on time. No problem, though I was thankful that my cunning was still intact as I took a ‘photo-opportunity’ to take the girls to the pub next door (to use the loo, honest) while the official photographer was doing his stuff.
If this all seems a little offbeat for a windsurfing event report, suffice it to say that while I was at the wedding I’d managed to miss nothing at the event bar the obligatory swing ball competitions, Frisbee action and general rig it up, de-rig it action.
Saturday nights would mirror each other I feel, at the wedding a proper sit down meal, lots of booze, into party mode …… at the camp site a proper camp site meal, lots of booze, into party mode.
Sunday morning came around pretty early for me, leaving around 5am to make the event for Sunday / Monday. The journey was pretty incident free and I arrived just after the briefing and in good time for the wind to pick up. Once in, parked up and stretched, it was time to rig something up. Tough choice for me as I’ve gone minimal for 2005 with my formula kit, with a Neil Pryde 10.7m RS5 for the majority of the time, and switching to a Neil Pryde 9.0m V8 when it’s too windy to use the 10.7m. The idea is that I’ll be on the 10.7m 90% of the time and won’t spend time deliberating between 9.8m & 10.7m & 11.6m sails and ultimately pick the wrong one most of the time.
As the winds were light, i.e. there wasn’t any yet otherwise we’d already be on the water, the choice was simple, rig the 10.7m. Once rigged and all plugged together on the beach it was time to join everyone chanting for the wind to come, ie slide off for a cuppa.
Sure enough, we got the wind we were all hoping for and racing was called. It was now that I was starting to feel that I’d perhaps peaked a little early, and this before I even hit the water. Whatever, having driven all the way to Wales and there being some wind I was sure that I was going to get some windsurfing in and headed out to see if I could get planning, and tweak my set up before we started racing.
I’d decided that I was likely to be a touch un-prepared to do full battle and as such signed up to go play with the guys and gals in the free-formula fleet. Having missed the briefing, it seemed sensible to follow the ‘flying doc‘ and ‘torpedo’ around until I got my bearings, which proved to be a mistake somewhat unsurprisingly.
All three of us only just made the start line, leaving us in the wake, and dirty wind, of the main fleet as we headed off. We all arrived at the top mark within sight of each other and then it went a little pear shaped. The ‘flying doc’ had a dose of wind and disappeared, ‘torpedo’ missed the mark having to tack an extra couple of times, putting me in front of ‘torpedo’ who I was following now having lost sight of the ‘flying doc’. Off I went in search of the next mark with ‘torpedo’ chasing hard, so I continued ‘following’ ‘torpedo’ from the front finding the reach to the next mark to be a bit on the tight side, more of a fetch than a reach.
It became apparent that this was an extra mark put in for the main FW fleet and ‘torpedo’ and myself had put an extra ½ mile into the course just for good measure. There was time for humour as while heading for this mark I was caught and passed my medallion man, Nick Dempsey, and for good measure took just enough wind from my sail to make the mark really tight to make. Obviously my layline was spot on as I hit the mark and rolled around it, catching my fin in the ropes and spectacularly bailing out to the amusement of Sooty and co in the rescue boat just off the mark.
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