Last Saturday was grey but the wind forecast suggested winds less than 15 knots easing as the afternoon progressed. After a series of Saturday race days blown out, I was keen to get the Sabre back in the water. The first of two races, i seriously fluffed the start, but had a good race with Penny who is also relatively new to Sabre sailing. I could draw ahead on the upwind leg,but she was much better down wind. I needed to give her rounding room at the bottom mark. I went wide, and gybed onto port tack, and started steering up to the finish line. She was still on the other gybe, and we collided, the bow of her boat hitting the rear port side of mine. I am still not sure who was in the wrong, but I did a 360 on the general principle that you should never collide with anybody, and she won the race.
The next race I started better, despite getting a good whack on the side of the head from the boom while waiting for the race to start. I was keeping much closer to the two other Sabre sailers, hooting down the top reaching leg, when a fierce squall blew through. I clocked 8.6 knots, but the nose of the boat was digging into the waves in front, and I had a vision of pitchpoling so I headed up and let the sail flap ... as did the rest of the fleet. I granny gybed round the mark, loosing some ground, and I was beating again into a lumpy sea, sheeting in hard, when the thwart, that the mainsheet connects to, ripped right out of the boat. I managed to turn towards home and run in, but it was close to a capsize for the first thirty seconds.
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