Sailing Events
SAILING PROGRAMME for 2008
Social Events
Social Programme 2008
Bar Opening Hours:
Wednesday 19.30-23.00
Friday 18.00-21.00
Sunday 12.00-15.00
Duty Man Roster
Your News & Views
Please send your stories, opinions and photos to the webeditor
06 May 05
One White Duck
(to the power of 10 = Zero. Ask Jethro)
There are only three types of people in the world, those that can count and those that can't. So taking into account that on a long enough timeline your chance of survival ultimately reaches zero and if 82.5% of all statistics are made up on the spot, and 50% of all errors are generated during corrections what are the chances? Two boats, one day.
Bala is a beautiful place to sail, the water is clean, and generally stays where it is put, the surrounding scenery is breathtaking. The launch and recovery is sublime, with some of the more confident helms launching only seconds prior to the 5-minute warning. I had looked forward to this event since missing it last year. The weeks of preparation had been a satisfying appetiser for 3 days of quality competition. The grey and damp drizzle of Saturday morning had followed a night of heavy rain. This cleared magically for the 12:00 start, a sailing breeze had arrived and the sun was out, perfect.
We had started the day worried about two dodgy battens; they were duly taped and re fitted. We were out on the water and sailing well, but then foiled by the fickle finger of fate. A gust, a jammed mainsheet, a capsize. We had damaged our mainsail; we have a spare jib and a spare spinnaker so it had to be the main! Suffice to say we now have two person shaped windows in the main and even the stickiest of sticky tape would not put this back together. Wild Cat was offline, the mainsail was FUBAR'd (Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition). It was an ex main, it had shuffled off this mortal coil, deceased, dead done in and?..you get the picture. Undeterred we considered several options.
When things go wrong the human is resourceful, adaptable and ingenious we were none of these so finally we chose to return to Dee and borrow Animal, a fine and robust Nacra 6.0. By the time all the de-rigging and messing about was done it was getting late. We set off to return to Bala with Animal in tow. There would be no more sailing for us that day. 45 miles out an oncoming car that was pulling out to overtake hit the side of the trailer and Animal sustained mortal wounds. They must have had damage to their car but they did not stop (if you are reading this then get in touch). We chose to continue on to Bala and arrived back too late for the BBQ. There was a slim chance that we could repair the damage enough to sail Sunday but we chose to bail out. There is a point when tenacity is not the best option and something has to be let go. The Gods had decided that we would not sail and reluctantly we agreed. It was good to see so many Dee boats making the trip and we hope the compliment is returned. I will leave the reporting of the sailing to those that actually did some. On the plus side I was no longer worried about the two dodgy battens.
Given that my time spent sailing at the Bala Open (25 minutes) and boats rendered unusable (2) as a result of sailing, then if I continue sailing for the next 10 years at the average of 3 hours a week for 40 weeks of the year, then. 10 x 3 x 40 x 60 = 72000 minutes divided by 12.5 minutes (average life expectancy of a boat in my charge) = 5760. If I want to continue sailing at this rate I will statistically go through about 5760 boats. According to my opening contention only half of you will follow that (or is it a third)?
The aftermath of our adventure has generated some unwelcome work and considerable cost. Smile in the face of adversity? I might if I ever get my chin off the floor. Be philosophical? As Prince Charles may say, ?One's glutinous maximus?! Sailing? Still worth it??..Totally!
With the spare time I took some pictures...Lots of pictures.
Back to top
