Geelong Road Trip

Road trip!!!!

In our annual survey of members, there was keen interest in doing more road trips.  So this was the first for the season to meet with our Geelong brothers and sisters and have a crack at some league racing.

What is it about road trips with a group of windsurfers that always make it a great time?  New location, being harassed by Red and Jacques, I don’t know, but whatever it is, the IWC crew that did the road trip to Lake Connewarre a couple of weekends ago had a ball.

Most of us got up at an ungodly hour on a Sunday a couple of weekends ago with the promise of 15 – 20kts and flat water on the Lake.  Mobiles started ringing and texts were flying all over the place as people where finding out were everybody was and what they were doing.  Second Breakfasts and coffee at the BP on the Point Wilson Rd turnoff was most welcome as members started rocking up all full of excitement of sailing a new location.  We left in convoy and surprise, surprise most of us got there together (except Lozza who blamed his GPS).

This was to be a fun day of long flat water windsurfing with some racing thrown in.  Big thanks to Jacques and Red for organising this.  Especially Jacques’ wife, for giving him a leave pass from their one week old little girl.

The wind built through the day with 10 – 15 kts in the morning then 15 kts in the afternoon with a few 18 kt gusts.  During the afternoon Jacques and Red got us all trying out the League Racing, a simple concept of grouping like sailors together with the winner going up a group and the person bringing up the field dropping down a group.  Well first race out, I was smokin’ my group with a lead of 200 mtrs on the first 800mtr leg.  Now where is that first buoy!!  Could not find it until I turned around and saw 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th places turning around it 100mtrs behind me.  Needless to say I dropped down a group.  At the end we decided to have a handicap race.  At the start I had Jacques well covered but then he got on his board and motored down the course!!  The first mark was an interesting manoeuvre as the tide was low and all sailors hit the mark at the same time.  A bit of carnage as a few ran aground and a few spills as others tried to get around them.  I think from the smiles and the laughter at the end of the day the racing concept was a hit.  Interesting to note the best sailors were not necessarily the first over the line as rig choices and wind gusts (and finding the buoy!) played a big part in the game.

The day saw 20 windsurfers hit the water with 12 joining in the races.  The highlights for me were seeing Big Ted’s big smile as he got both feet in the straps (at the end of the day he was still telling people about it!!) and Robbie get a pb on his GPS taking out a $20 board he brought at the IWC garage sail!