Warming Pan Races 1&2 Sunday 8th - Patrick Palmer
Published 13:46 on 10 Mar 2022
Race Box: Chris Burke/Sarah Gee/Jerry Robinson/Phil Selwood
Patrol Boat: Mike Coady/Martin.Hickey
Tractoring. Niall Waters/Chris Halfknight
F3-5 E N/E gusty and cold
It's fair to say that there were varying quantities of rustiness in in the compact fleet that sailed the WSC 2022 curtain-raising 2 races. At least in the cat fleet, that is in the Feva, the only mono, Josh Rawlings and Noah Walters were as unperturbable as billy-ho, sailed two great races and did well on handicap. Although the fleets will be separated when the results are finally tabulated; perhaps there's a case for these early series of low attendance to be sailed as a single fleet to provide more competition.
Even the paragon which are Rob/Fi had a bit of bad luck launching, leaving the latter floundering and refreshed in a wave, whilst the former looked on with his cold and remorseless eye. These occasionally tricky launching conditions were matched by intermittently gusty patches out at sea which flushed out some, shall we call them, "technical shortcomings" from your writer, Phil G, and Gilbert/Bob, leading to us all capsizing. My own was a bit of a classic cock-up with recovery impeded by my not releasing the traveller (top tip) Phil claimed his overturning was part of a rigorous early season safety procedural check, and who am I to say whether this is a transparent pack of lies and nonsense, and as for Gilbert/Bob, well they barely survived a pitch-pole in front of me just after the start of R2, so the writing was clearly on the wall for them.
The honourable multi-hulled exception was Caleb in the Nacra 17, who got around with his usual insouciance, which did him little good when compared to D18-machines Rob/Fi, who tactically ditched their jib on land and still sailed two blinding races, starting as they mean to go on and getting two firsts. R1 saw Gilbert/Bob scoring 2nd place with the Nacra's devilishly low handicap meaning that it pretty much has to finish before the rest of us start to give it a chance of winning. Which it didn't. In R2, Noah/Josh got a nominal second on handicap which is pretty top stuff given the tricky conditions.
After the sailing there were some disturbing sights as Gilbert and Phil did their Daniel Craig emerging from the surf impressions; (a Daniel Craig to whom time has been either unkind in conditioning, or too kind in nutrition), I pondered on how this new low of race results (disqualified/retired) extrapolated out over the course of the season might not augur well for these turbulent times, and the rest of the fleet warmed up over the excellent Jonty/Sasha fare.
And we can all look ahead to Sunday 13th at midday for 2 more races with a forecast splendid 15 knts s/w and the temperature due to be surprisingly warm given its single-integer status.