2015 – 2016 Inter-Galactic Series. Race 3 report.

The mad rush to launch was soon dispelled by a pleasant, just foiling, cruise over to the Committee Boat. However, the peace was shattered when, for reasons unfathomable, the Starting official set us a huge course on a light and shifty wind day.

The breeze filled in, momentarily, at about 15 seconds from the start, boosting the line-louse Moar-FM right to the pin end, necessitating a spectacular crash-tack on the mark – which sure LOOKED like it made them over early. Anyways – let bygones be – and so the more accurately timed boats buried the hatchet by claiming the favoured left hand side of the course, placing the crew with a collective experience of nearly 90 seasons (true!) unusually last in the fleet.

There is an expression about a polished turd – but that didn’t apply to Le Merde today. Her crew skillfully picked the best pressure to stay on foils in the marginal up-hill conditions, occasionally touching 16 knots, and pulling away from the pack. The tussle for the minor places was made all the more interesting thanks to the two new-crew combinations and the mixture of foilers vs non-foilers in on-off foiling conditions, and Jessica's now famous  360-on-wire-spin. Mean-while, Merde picked up a gust to twin-wire to the top mark and a 5 minute+ lead. The mild conditions then gave the newest Rapt-R crew some valuable kite-handling-while-staying-upright time – and the super smooth water saw the foiling boats push really hard downhill, with some good speeds reported on the Gen2 foils on TheVirtual.

The more consistent More-FM seized 2^nd place somewhere in the second leg and they then ate a good 500m out of Merde’s lead in the very light wind second windward leg. TheVirtual were also catching some good puffs to stay in the race. However, Le Merde was still well in front at the top mark, where they hooked some good pressure to sear off downhill, untouched and untouchable, to win by a country-mile. Never-the-less, Sam stays on top of the IG table, due to his finishing every race and a polygamous crew/ skipper strategy.

More pictures