I had the worst start ever. I was going backwards at the moment of the startsignal. Some very anti-social elements forced me to pull the emergency-brake, they locked me up, etc. I didnot realize that my traveller was not yet in the middle of the beam so I didnot manage to stop the backwards movement before I found out about the traveller. The result was that I started as the last boat ! After the startline I took the first road on the right, moved a few hundred meters upwind and started the race perhaps 10 or 15 minutes after the first boat went over the line. This manouevre helped a lot because I was in the company of at least 3 other blades at about half of the first leg. On the way back I lost perhaps 10 or 15 minutes because we sailed the race with one trapeze (Thijs, 50 kg) and dived 3 times with Thijs at the front of the boat(no footstraps, mastrake far too forward. Using 2 trapezes with this boattrim would have been too dangerous with the extreme windgusts that dominated the race. I saw extreme many capsizes. It was however a lot of fun with flat water, enough (but too gusty)wind, sun and nice temperature. It was the first race ever for Thijs (14 )with a lot of wind and the fourth time he was on a catamaran. In this respect he has done a very good job !
In essence the race was 60 km of reaching which made the differences between the handicaps less important, darts did for instance very well with this circumstances. And af course a bad start is under these conditions (190 boats before you and only reaching) hardly to compensate with tactical tricks. With the correct mastrake I would of course have done better. Starting while moving backwards have caused a lot of fun in our family. The good thing is of course that this can easily be bettered next year. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />