Thursday, February 11, 2010

GFC kept me out of the sea

Well things haven’t panned out exactly as I would have liked, largely due to lack of sponsorship funds to complete the preparation of the boat and for the financing of the circumnavigation of Australia. Damn the financial downturn! So I’m down but not out. I’ve been at this way too long to stand down now. My plan now is to leave at the end of February, I have decided to sell my firstborn – sorry Jacko, he doesn’t know that yet – he has good teeth and is strong, hoping to get a nice price and find him and a good home as well. The good news is I’ve had Spirit out for a few sails, and besides the bits of equipment I need for the circumnavigation she is ready to go.

The other good news is while twiddling my thumbs I decided to go out to do the WA State keelboat titles on the Sonar, with my old mainsheet hand Jeff Milligan and Rachel Cox, Silver medallist at Beijing. We had one training session before the States and it was a pleasure sailing with both Jeff and Rachel as they are both true professionals. We ended up winning three of the four races taking out the State titles.

Congratulations to Graeme Martin for putting together a great regatta.

At Christmas time we put a Sailability team together made up of six team members, myself, Graeme Martin, Rachel Cox, Russel Boaden, Rocket and Mark Bagby. We went and did the Cockburn Sound regatta, rotating the sailors on Graeme’s boat Sandcrabs Disco and the Sonar Noel Robbins. Graeme won division four, and we won division two and three and also came second overall for the whole regatta. We all had a great time and hope to do it again next year.

I’m now planning a big sail on Spirit at the end of January as a final training run before leaving at the end of February.

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