That was February

February started off with the Adams 10m titles once again at Middle Harbour. The weather over the January Australia Day long weekend brought decent wind out of the Noreast for the first and last day, the Sunday was a writeoff as we only got the one race in.

The series was always going to be hard fought between Tim Gallego steering Jim Curtis’s Another Dilemma [MH26] and Ben Nossiter’s Sirius [MH118]. Tim is a long time Adams 10 sailor and since his move to England some years ago, makes the trip out each January for a sail. Ben has for many years – some say too many, ruled the scratch pointscore at MHYC. On this occasion, Tim was able to just make the break at the starts on most occasions and hold off Ben for the 2013 Title.

Chris Williams aboard Coconut Telegraph was the third placed boat and the winner of the DeckHardware donated Pat Carroll Memorial Trophy for the best placed timber seated version.

I then took off on a small overnight drive down to Canberra and across to Eden on the south coast for a DeckHardware sales trip. These places are just a little too far to do in a day from Sydney but an overnighter makes it easer to see the customers down south. I was able to check on the progress of a yacht being fitted with Man Ship Marine hatches, ports and sliding companionway hatches. They look good, however the owner builder has had some down time due to other issues and the launch is some time off.

Back home and it was back in to race management mode, this time the next heat of the NSW Kiteboarding Association titles. Kiteboarding attracted a range of competitors. There were those who sailed and those who surfed, rather like the introduction decades ago of the Windsurfer. On this day we only had a handfull of the 38 entrants turn up as the conditions for this form of sailing are rather specific. Most sailors can sail in anything up to 25-30 knots with out major issues. Kites on the other hand require a minimum of 10 knots just to get out on the water. This raises all sorts of issues when planning ahead for course racing.

It is a good experience however and I look forward to next season and hopefully better weather and more competitors.

The following weeks saw me up at Pittwater helping run the Pittwater High Schools District teams sailing event. This was a new one for me as I hadn’t been involved in any teams racing management before. With Melissa as one of the umpires, I was able to get my head around running 60 odd races in one day. It made for some interesting discussions between us on the radio. I wanted to start a race, however I couldn’t because there were no umpires on the startline. More things to think of other than wind/tide and course construction that I usually watch out for. Again it was an experience watching some of the sailors teams racing and making calls to their team mates on who to cover etc.

We have just had the JJ Giltinan World 18’er Championship on the harbour and amongst the competitors was a staff member of Allen Brothers in England. DeckHardware distributes the Allen product range and this was a great opportunity to spend some time with Tristan Hutt and the crew of Pica who made the trip ‘Downunder’. The photo shows the CTech team from NZ making the perfect porthand start. They were able to continue this break and lead the whole way around the track. The bow on port behind CTech is The Kitchen Maker skippered by dual Olympic Gold Medalist Mal Page, unfortunately he had to take the sterns on most of the fleet and wasn’t able to recover, finishing mid fleet.

Melissa was able later in the week on the layday to take the Pica team on a tour of the Northern Beaches taking in some of the sights of Home and Away’s Summer Bay. The TV show is seen by more in England than here, so they were pleased to have the opportunity.

The English sailors were more than happy to spend some time away from the English Winter, we think they will be back.

This coming weekend we have the 420/470 States at MHYC and the following weekend in the Sydney Harbour Regatta featuring the Sydney38 Championships, both events I’ll be running as RO. Hopefully we get some of the nice weather as seen in the 18’er photo, but given the battering that the East Coast of Australia has been having of late, I don’t think so.

With the south east of Queensland and norther New South Wales being affected by floods recently, several of my sales trips have had to be changed, hopefully after Easter I can get up north and show off the new DeckHardware products. Our thoughts go out to those who have suffered losses due to these floods.