June 16th 2013 - Our first race and seasick crew!

Hull Sailing Club run a programme of races throughout the year and we decided that we felt confident enough to enter.  Our dear friends Bev and Patrick joined us and we penned out of the lock at 1015 onto a very windy and choppy river.  We started the race heading down river with full sail up, overtaking two boats that should have been much faster than us - but our success was short-lived!  The course required us to go about and head back up river and I decided that we needed to reef the main, which caused a few problems, losing us a place.  This was compounded some time later as I noticed that the main was looking a bit saggy and realised that the main halyard was loose in the jammer and consequently falling down.  Sorting this took longer than expected and as soon as we were back on track Sam went down below to check on Kal (the cat), finding that he had been seasick!  She set about cleaning up down below, but then I noticed that poor Patrick was also looking a bit green round the edges!  We decided to retire from the race and made our way back to the marina.  I was pleased with the boat in general, though for racing the handling will need to be much slicker.  We'll try again another day.