Wet and Wild at Forster
The camping gear should be dried out by now after yet another Forster Wildcat Regatta in the rain. We all arrived Thursday and Friday to set up camp for a weekend sailing party. Twelve F18s joined the fleet of about 80 catamarans sailing in the regatta. Brett Goodall and Christa travelled from Bendigo, Victoria to compete but they got mixed up and brought the wrong boat. The sailed a F16 Viper. Andrew Holden made the trip from Queensland and we had Adam Beashel sailing on the Pellews boat. All the families and friends came to join in the fun. In fact our F18 group had more people there for the party than actually sailing. A new bloke called "Spike" distills homemade rum and his OP chocolate rum got the party started on Friday night. Regrettably it had a devastating affect on the opposition Saturday morning.
After several hours floating about, Saturday's racing was abandoned due to lack of wind. As to be expected the Nor'easter kicked in just as we reached the shore. This was not a total catastrophe because many of the competitors were a little jaded after partying too hard on Friday night. Saturday was a very early night and we woke to a fresh Nor'easter on Sunday.
Four races back to back in the fresh conditions tested our endurance. Monday was more of the same with two races held in a 15kts Nor'easter. Yet again the Brewins sailing the new C2 dominated the F18 fleet with a score 1,DNF,1,1,1,1. Kyle and Grant came second with 5,2,2,3,2,2 proving that an old Tiger with well used sails is still very competitive in the right hands. James and Pete sailing a Nacra came third with 3,1,7,2,5,3. For the rest of the results and photos go to the Forster website http://forstersailing.blogspot.com/
We are expecting even more boats at the next regatta. The Rod and Jason Waterhouse will be sailing 2 new Hobie Wildcats and hope to make it to our next regatta at Speers Point.
This was the third event of the Travellers' series. Our first event was at SFS Brass monkey's Regatta. Event 2 at Kurnell and Event 3 Wildcat.
Coming Up
October 23-24 Speers Point Regatta (camping and billeting available)
November 6-7 Top Gun Regatta Kurnell (camping)
November 13-14 F18 NSW State titles at the Bullets Regatta Palm Beach
November 27 28 Kembla Klassic Port Kembla (unofficial camping)
January 22-24 F18 Nationals Gosford
Feb 5 Pulbah Island Marathon Speers Point
Feb 27 Cock of the Bay Marathon Kurnell
March 5-6 Trial Bay Regatta ( Darren Lowder Memorial) (national park camping booking essential)
April 17 Darren Lowder Memorial Kurnell
See you on the water
Leanne Gould
