Prior to the actual regatta, we were "lucky" enough to spend a few days modifying and preparing the boat. Mostly, this involved lots of swearing and sweating. The picture above is Adrian Baguley (Gary's son) who very kindly came along, like superman and helped finish off the race preparation. He is up the mast, taping over the ends of the spreaders so they don't rip the sail.
This is a fellow competitor in our class - Breakaway. It has mostly french crew, more of them later and a slogan down the side of the boat saying, Why Do I Do It? More of that later too. The first days sailing was fairly straight forward with light winds, so at this point most boats were still in good shape. We only had one small problem in that we ripped the light weight spinnaker. This went off to be repaired.
Fortunately, day two was much windier, so we were Ok with our heavy weight spinnaker. The stronger winds took their toll on the fleet. Above is Breakaway and if you look closely, there is a big hole in their mainsail. Lots of boats sustained damage with one losing its mast. Another boat in our class, damaged the rig on a smaller sports boat, Pornstar in a collision. Our damage that day was limited to putting a big hole in our heavy weight spinnaker, but this was patched by us during the race and held out.
Day three and the winds were lighter, but this boat still lost its mast. We did a long passage race and finished third. The only problem we had that day was the intense heat.
The crew on El Coyote before the race started, checking everything is in position.
After the race, the crew on El Coyote. From the left, Siham, David, Garry, Tony, Scott, Thane and Chris. The skipper was away repairing other people's boats.
This is Pornstar, back on the water after repairing the rig that was damaged.
In the background is Intrigue. A 65 foot, 50 tonne boat that was racing in our class. We had some really close starts with them. On the final day, race one, they caught us out and we had to tack and lose ground. However, revenge was sweet. At the start of race two, Gary Baguley was able to force Intrigue to do a 360 degree turn before the start line, allowing us to get the text book perfect start.
These guys had plenty of beer on board, but no fuel. We towed them back to the marina, but couldn't get them into their berth.
So, this little inflatable towed them backwards around the marina and into their berth. The fee for this assistance was three cans of beer and a T -shirt. Pretty good value heh?
There was a party every night after racing, and on the final night this pretty young lady served us with Tetley bitter and cider. The boys didn't know what was best, the free beer or the pretty girls.
The last night's party. As the sun went down, spirits went up. We tried to get a picture of all of the crew. This is 10/11ths. Front row from the left - Garry and Sam. Back row from the left - Cliff (who was Mr Muscle doing the grinding), Alison and Chris, Siham, Tony , David, Scott and Gary Baguley.
As we said earlier, Breakaway has Why Do I Do It? on their boat and uniforms. On our uniform, we have Pourquoi Pas!! which is french for ???? and a good response to their question. When you know what it means, please leave as a comment. This is what is going on in the picture above.
This is Frankie from Breakaway who not only stole second place from us but also stole the limelight in this picture.
The T shirts were fab and everyone at the regatta knew which boat we were sailing on.
Proof of our third place and the reason Why We Do It. We also got a mention in the Bangkok Post (newspaper). Interesting description, "Thai-based, aussie, marine sector entrepreneur, Gary Baguley, was third in IRC class 1".We have a few weeks until our next race and look forward to spending the time making more go faster mods to El Coyote.
Cheers for now
Alison and Garry
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