Sun 24 aug
Nice sunny day with a westerly predicted, good thing we were lank disorganised and left ages after everyone. They drifted out and hung around for a while until the predicted wind settled in. Who designs boats where it takes half an hour to get the engine on and going?! If we got there any earlier, we might have moved onto the second slab before the start. Even I think that's a bit excessive.

There's some serious checking out going on at the startline as we cruise up and down the whole time waiting. Being a sunday, also probably the only time there'll be any hotties on spectator boats. We all took turns with the binocs scoping out the scene on Blunderchild, disappointing case of nice from far, far from......

They set a course with a monster wide start line, probably due to the amount of hackers in the entrylist. The raucous students caused some chaos by reversing on the line. Big Willy managed to manouver Chapstick through the traffic, but we never saw him again. We got off well, only to see there's indeed some boats over. Very tense as we had to listen on the radio for the sailnumbers of those over, not easy when the Dude is jumping up and down and screaming.

Thought we were going smoking well as Daddy's Impatience was coming downwind towards us. Turns out it was just one of their spinnakers on a dog old thirty square, the thing looked miles better than our pokey bag. Things got quite tense round the first mark, but we have some loud units on the boat and all around us kept their distance or got out of the way.

The race spread out along the way with the top three quite a way ahead and we had a few battles with the boats around us. The one boat was screaming at us in german, good ploy as we backed off from that stuff pretty quickly.

By the way my work round the mast was impeccable today, with every hoist and drop in double quick time. Not one thank you, tough week ahead indeed.

It appears the w&nker line is pretty close to the front this year, but with a bit more luck we should be the otherside of it come friday.

Had to make up an excuse of going to church just to get home early for once, am absolutely shot from all that sitting in the sun drinking beer whilst waiting for the race to start.

Mom phoned to say she saw me on tv, didn't realise SABC news was interested in our little yacht race - must get hold of my agent to leverage my exposure.