September 1st – The first race of the season.

Ah, Spring. That glorious time of year when a young man’s mind turns to thoughts warm and wet. Lapping waves, freshening breezes, and clear, sunny skies on Saturday afternoons down on the river, locked in fierce competition against fellow gladiators of the seas. Sinew, alumin(i)um and fibreglass come together as one in the all-consuming pursuit of rounding the marks ahead of the fleet (or at least, not too far behind it) and steely resolve galvanises body and mind.

Ah, Spring. For those unfamiliar with the antipodean calendar, as I was, the season kicks off on September first, rather than coinciding with the vernal equinox as it does in the old country. No matter when it starts, Spring is a delightful yet mildly flighty season. Three days of temperatures in the mid-twenties, with glorious sunshine beating down amid 30km/h breezes, all falling on weekdays when we valiant champions of the river are locked in our private salt mines, toiling away to pay the rent and purchase assorted bits and bobs for our steeds. On the inaugural day of the season, threats of rain, almost twenty degrees of warmth and an almost teasing breeze fairly mocked us as we dredged our skills and knowledge out of storage, where they had lain over the winter.

But this is a criticism of near-perfection, which is unwarranted. Would the Mona Lisa be any less alluring with a small pimple on her jawline? Nay, she would not. And so it is for sailing days. So long as there is water and the faintest suggestion of a breeze – or even single digit temperatures (Ottawans: I know that’s not cold. Temperature does become relative, though!) and howling gale force winds… a bad day on the water is better than a good day in the office, any day.

As the preceding paragraphs suggest, our sailing club commenced the 2007-2008 racing series Saturday past. This will be my first season in the new boat, who has already suffered the ignominy of having her name misspelled on the official time results! Everyone seemed to remember which bits went where and attached to what, which is exceedingly fortunate in that this likely prevented a number of capsizes into the still quite chilly Parramatta. A number of the kids didn’t seem to notice that is was cold… maybe their thermostats are shot.

The race itself turned out mostly as expected: the top boats, sailed by experienced and accomplished members of the club, whipped around the course in short order. Those of us with more rudimentary skills joined in a fierce competition for the best of the bottom seven or eight rankings. At times, the racing down at our level of the ladder was intensely close, punctuated by exciting breakaways as one or two discovered a gust of wind or a sail setting that yielded an advantage of dozens to hundreds of metres. Metres, of course, that were surrendered a leg or two later, as is the nature of things.

Ron, with the advantage of experience, has a great sense of where to be in order to move along smartly. No matter how aggressively I try to outsail him, he calmly sits in his boat and finishes ahead of me. Steven’s also got a pretty calm approach, and a fairly well developed technique (at least, to my unpractised eye). Peter and John (grandpa/grandson) in their individual boats did well this week – John found a great gust and took off on us and never gave up all of the lead. Geoff sailed like he’s ready to step up to the next level – after a very crowded rounding of the #4 mark he got knocked way off course behind us. In fairly short order, he made up the ground and finished very well! It’s all boat speed, as he says.

Yours truly is quite pleased to report that I did not finish last. In fact, I tied with Steve for 13th, out of 15 or so boats. We staged an exciting duel at the finish for the finishing committee (who are tasked with logging the finish time of every boat… right down to laggards who finish up to an hour after the first boat). Steve was well ahead on the final leg to the pre-finish mark, but in what seems to be a misjudged tack yielded just enough of his advantage for me to catch him right at the line for a photo finish!

However, once handicap corrections are taken into account, my elapsed time was reduced to put me in 8th place on handicap. This means that I have a rather shocking handicap, in that the adjustment is quite large. So, my goal this season is going to be improving my handicap by an unspecified amount, such at it is at least a bit better than it is now.

And now, all that is left is to look forward to the next race.

Fair winds.