Bermuda RISR 2011 the Reprise

I am forsaking the flat waters of Waikato River, My minimax, My 5R and my marriage to make it to this years RISR as New Zealands self appointed and sole international representative. Tickets are booked, bags are packed and I am ready to go. The only proverbial cloud on the horizon is a little [well actually a lot of] volcanic ash wafting about the place. About 30 flights to and from New Zealand have been cancelled today. But since I don't fly out till first thing Tuesday, there is nothing to worry about

.I don't profess to be the worlds best seagull racer, but have spent heaps of time in boats, completed numerous Great Easter Waikato races and most notably the RISR 2007. I cling to the philosophy of: "to Finish first, first you must finish". A sort of keep everybody honest policy that every now and then pays [tortoise and the hare] dividends.

I am going back to Bermuda to catch up with the friends I met in 2007 and to enjoy the idyllic Bermuda weather, fishing, diving, scenary and history. A very good outcome will be to complete the race for the second time (proving the first effort wasn't a fluke), make it to prize giving [overpowering heat and Pimms ...in no particular order, put paid to that in 2007] and maybe win the fishing prize.

I promise to take spy cam photos of the race and Bermuda race boats ... and hopefully provide regular (depending on computer access) updates of progress.

For those with lots of time on their hands and because I pretty much anticipate a more or less repeat of what happened in 2007, it was all documented here:

http://sites.google.com/site/piratepete ... aadventure

That way I just have to change the dates and I can spend the rest of my time in Bermuda drinking rum

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Ah the joys of travel. Happy to say that we made it out of New Zealand all the way to Sydney under the dust cloud . In an risk-taking display of true grit and determination worthy of the ANZAC spirit, Air New Zealand is flying in the face of about 7000 stranded Quantas and JEtSTAR passengers. Thus demonstrating a harden the hell up type of attitude that would make your average Bermudian Proud.

I am greatfull that Air Nz did get us here, otherwise my Bermuda RISR assault would have ended in a pile of missed the race altogether, re-bookings, exponential costs, and general frustration. So more than happy to say I am well on my way and safe from ongoing Christchurch Earthquake calamities.

Look out Bermuda, tomorrow evenings post will be from the land of friendly people, warm clear waters and whistling frogs.

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An up date for anybody who is interested. The Pirate and the ancient one (84 year old support crew and father) have made it to New York, New York. We just have to loiter around the hotel a while then make it to the airport to catch the evening flight to Bermuda.

Mega international travel - I had forgotten how rough it is. 3 hours Wellington to Sydney, loiter around Sydney airport for 5 hours then hop on a flight to San Francisco 14 hours, 3 hours at the airport was pretty busy with clearing customs and checking in for the 5 hour flight to New York.

Arrived in New York after being shaken and stirred (sydney to san fran and then across the States was a seat belt on most of the flight and rocking like a christchurch earth quake.

Anyhows, almost there

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Ahoy me scurveys

https://picasaweb.google.com/piratepete ... TheREPRISE

The Pirate and the ancient mariner have made it to Bermuda. It is more beautifull here than I imagined. The heat, the colours, the frogs which the ancient one cannot hear because he is deaf and the friendly Bermudians are all here and spoiling us rotten.

Consistency is my moto and sure enough after 3 celebratory minature rums I ended up *porched* underneath the good ship and appropriately named Legless within 5 hours of arriving in Bermuda.

I give up, I guess I am a soft new age sensitive man. Obviously unaccustomed heat, dehydration and cheap alchohol are a dangerous combination for me. 32 hours of being cramped up in a flying sardine can,breathing solid air conditioning and neck pain might have been metabolically altogether too much for my delicate constitution. Hopefully I have gotten that monkey off my back and can get on with things.

Anyhow, after a couple of good nights sleep I am coming right. Race day is shaping up to be a scorcher. The marine forecast was for light winds and probably glass calm seas. So if I am sensible I will stick to a few of the sponsors best and water. Otherwise that old Palm tree will be beckoning.

Happy to report that we have a race boat. Beautifully prepared by Captain Cruel aka Bruce. She is a head turner and probably the epitomy of the sort of boat that an antique outboard motor like a seagull, should be clamped to. We went for a harbour cruise last night and it was magic being out on Bermuda waters.

Lots of seagull pre race boat activity, magic warm clear water, flash boats and flash houses. I think the ancient one is seriously considering selling up in New Zealand and coming over here to live. Unfortunately the Ancient one is about 3 to 4 million US$$$$ short of having a snowballs chance. But without doubt he is suitably impressed by the place.

Having a boat in the water is a good start, but having a fully operational motoris another. Todays effort was to locate the Motor, somewhere in the depths of Bruces basement. Then to do the fundamental race preps. Clean the fuel tank, clean the carb, clean and check the points, change the gear box oil, check all the bolts and fastenings and try and start her up.

Bruce said the motor should be fine, it was run last year. Then on reflection, he added that maybe it was 2 years ago. Whenever, the motor was run and whoever ran it cleaned it up and shut it down in reasonable condition. But there was some serious Black gunk in the fuel line and the carb needed some serious attention. However, after my administrations, some clean fuel and a new spark plug, I am happy to report and moderately surprised when the old girl fired up and seems good to go.

I would like to fit the motor to the boat and do some sea trials to sort out engine trim and height and crew positioning for optimum speed. But such formalities are likely to play second fiddle to other basic race preparations e.g. buying fuel, ice, pimms, fishing lines etc.

Oh, did I mention fishing lines. It seems that the fishing prize is hotly contested and last year some dude caught a 35 lb rock fish or grouper. This year that lunatic is going to go really, really wide along the south shore to where the ocean drops off into really deep water, so he can land a wahoo. So, in respect, my puny secret hand lines and fishing plan is not even in the same ball park. At least the fishing will be a pleasant distraction and an undoubtable bonus to doing the RISR Seagull race. At the very least, I will be able to eat.

I am throwing together a Picasa photo album of the trip check out the link above for part 1.

Happy to be here, but it is altogether too hot

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Legless tales the lost diaries ... the night before

Re-capping. The kiwi contingent of myself (Pirate Pete) and the Ancient one flew to Bermuda under clouds of volcanic ash, leaving Canterbury earthquakes behinds us. We were shaken and stirred with a marathon flying effort from Wellington, NZ to Sydney, Australia; then onto San Francisco, across US of A to an overnight in New York; then a flight next day to Bermuda. But despite being just a tad travel weary, we were delighted to reach the Balmy, rum-laced shores of Bermuda with its singing frogs and huge adventures in good time for the RISR 2011.

Day one was spent launching the good ship and race boat Legless a beautifully restored 74-odd year old Bermuda fishing dinghy.

Day two was spent walking the dog, pulling the race motor, a vintage 1945 '102' classic British Seagull motor that we had used way back in 2007 to its component pieces. I managed little more than to clean the carb and points, fit a new spark plug and 'fire up' the motor in air to see if it would go. The motor responded promisingly to my engineering administrations and roared very positively into life. It would have been good to fit the motor to the boat and check trim and give it a good run (I would have been happy to see a good flow of water from the 'tell tale' that would confirm that the water galleries in the head were free and flowing). But the test was enough to convince me that we were almost certainly good to go.

With the trial start up being so promising, it seemed best to work on much more important race preparations:Procuring a goodly supply of pre-; during-; and Post-racing celebratory drinks (especially because the RISR coincided with a long weekend Bermuda Holiday and the shops would be shut). Most of the necessary supplies were secured at the local supermarket. Unfortunately ... or should that read fortunately there was no chance of getting a good supply of Pimms which makes a most refreshing and suitable RISR race drink [coincidentally Pimms was the much published, but completely maligned downfall of my 2007 post race RISR performance - heat and the very fine hospitality of Lobster had some small part to play in that).

Victualing sorted, the next task was to hunt down a supply of the "good oil" and sufficient fuel to complete the race. The only petrol station still open was well patronised that involved a long wait in a big queue to pick up some "good oil", about 20 liters of petrol and a couple bags of ice [Ice is very important to Bermudians and the quantity and quality are very important to any endeavor there and contemplating the RISR with out bags of ice was an unthinkable crime].

Next stop was at the Mill Creek Seagull racing Epicenter to pick the brains of Seagull outboard motor legend 'Charlie Brown' . I had noted that the throttle slide 'piston' of our vintage 102 race motor, didn't seem to be giving me full throttle. I suspected that the carb had been fitted with the 'wrong' slide piston. 'Charlie Brown' could neither confirm nor deny that the 'wrong' throttle slide piston could be an issue. But he generously spent considerable time digging around among his spare parts and came up with a slide piston that was indeed shorter ... and fitted.

Criminey, I was ecstatic, that simple pre-race adjustment theoretically had just gifted me a 20% increase in power. "Good on ya mate".

The evening was looking good. Bruce Lorhan was keeping me safe from the infamous hospitality of the mesmerizing lobster. I was celebrating the eve of the momentous occasion in fine RISR racing company and a most sobering fashion - I was careful to stick to mini-Heinekens (they seem to have released stubby-sized stubbies of Heineken ... I don't entirely approve, but liked to think the mini-stubbies were helping to promote moderation). I think it was midnight, but my 'Paparazi Pete' camera seems to indicate that maybe we made a stop off to where Legless was moored to make some pre-race preparations in the very dark before going home for a late tea, late night visitors and a late night ... ready for an early morning race start.

The RISR race day stage was set. bring it on! Surprisingly, despite it being a couple of busy and long days, I was like a kid on the night before Christmas and don't think I slept very much .... just too darn excited.

Picture, spots of threatening rain that only achieved enough to get the frogs momentarily excited and ruin my photograph of a pre-race Mill creek party in swing.

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Lost diaries The race start

Sometimes getting to the start line is the hardest part of the race. Being on that start line can be the culmination of years of planning, saving, designing, building race boats, working on motors, testing, travelling and all the the many little things that need to make it happen. All these steps can be fraught with problems and much can go wrong.

Then, the weather conditions on Race Day can ruin the best laid plans of men and the whole race could be called off.

However, the RISR 2011 race day dawned on a Capital C 'Craker' of a day. It would have been good to be alive anywhere, but being alive on RISR race day in Bermuda with a boat, race motor and crew .... took the cake!

First glimpse of the 'sea state' on the way from Orange Valley to where race boat 'Legless' lay ..... was breathtaking. The Bermuda Marine forecast had been for winds less than 5 knots and seas "nearly" 1 foot. - Come on Marine Forecast guys, it was always going to be flat asss calm, even for the Atlantic. Sure enough the mirror calm North Shore seas merged with the slightly hazy sky somewhere at infinity in an undetectable horizon. [Don't try taking a sextant fix on that folks].

International 'Team Legless' of Notman and Notman [New Zealand] and Luce [Mexico] were a bit behind a tight schedule to make it to the start line. A late night and a leisurely breakfast sort of ate up time and before we knew it, we were getting well behind the eight ball. I wasn't too fazed, because with the 'good oil', the ancient 102 seagull with the 'correct' throttle piston was surely capable of making up any lost time. With our very own (Bruce's) support boat towing the good raceboat 'Legless' like an Americas Cup racing Yacht, it started to look like we might just make the 0830 hrs class race start after all ... but it would be just in 'the nick of the time'.

The journey across the Great Sound was spectacular in the calm morning. Our journey was punctuated by several boats going out of their way to admire 'Legless' in all her shiney varnished and painted glory. High flattery indeed!

With the clock ticking down, we managed to swoop into Mangrove Bay and present ourselves at the Sandy's Boat club start line with 5 minutes to spare.

Photo: The 'nearly' 1 foot sea state on our tow to the start line across a very calm Great Sound, Bermuda. The RISR race course is simply to circumnavigate the Dominion of Bermuda keeping the land on your left and the sea monsters to the right. There is a dip into the Great Sound from Spanish Point to a mark just off Long Island [about where the photo was taken] then round Dockyards Point back to the Start/Finish at Sandy's Boat club, Mangrove Bay. The dip is out of respect to the days when the race started from the Anfossi Holiday home and starts from Spanish Point. ... The course specifically states no cheating by taking 'sneaking under bridges' short cuts.

On our run to the finish at the end of the day, the good race boat 'Legless' with its' multi-national crew was slowly but steadily mowing down a couple of chicks in a seagull race boat. It had pretty much taken us all of the Run down North Shore to close the gap. But it was looking very much like the glorious 'pass' was going to happen soon after rounding the mark at Long Island. But the chicks were either cheating [Hey, that is almost the honorable thing to be doing when seagull racing in Bermuda]; had had enough of a long day seagull motoring and just wanted to get home; or didn't want to be passed by Legless crewed by a team of internationals. For what ever reason, they headed straight for the Watford Bridge and as our courses got further and further apart (like ships in the night) they held their course. That left 'Seagullize it' and Legless to punch on the legitimate course taking us around the Dockyards and back to an honorable finish at Sandy's Boat club, Mangrove Bay.

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The lost diaries the worst possible start

A "Legless tale" - the lost diaries: The worst possible start

Team Legless arrived at the start line with a florish, complete with our own support boat and with great expectations ... but with less than 5 minutes to spare before the 'gun'. A little snobbish really, one really ought stand around on shore with quiet confidence, taking in the ambiance, talking to the other contestants or at the very least, trade a few 'sledges' (i.e. "the boat and motor are going particularly well today, we hit 7 knots on the way over .... and that was with the motor at idle" etc. etc. etc.).

Instead, I was spending the last minutes before race start bobbing around the briney, head down over the back of the boat, frantically but very, very, carefully (because we were in 10 feet of water and it would not go well if I dropped the nut) unbolting the "thrust block" adjustment bolt and locking in a tilt that left the Vintage 102 seagull delivering all its thrust at the perfect angle. While I was doing that, the multi-national crew were transferring over to 'Legless' from the support boat, along with a mountain of ice, fine victuals and just enough beverages to stave off dehydration, scurvy and sober conversations.

The start gun/wave of the flag went off.

We were ready, all I had to do was pull the start cord and we would be off. I pulled the start cord and .... nothing happened. A desperate rewind of the cord, frantic fiddling with the carb 'float tickler', adjusting the throttle setting and tinkering with the clutch lever .... still nothing happened.

The other boats moved across and off the start line on their way around the RISR.

Another start up procedure .. but this time with much more frantic fiddling and heaving on the starting cord. This time the finely tuned race motor fired and revved up in the most satisfying and positive way. Great, here ... we ... goooo!!! Down with the clutch lever and the throaty roar died away to an asthmatic tink tink tink. We were moving ...forward ... but barely and certainly not at the great rate that I had hoped for or expected. It was, however, enough to get us over the line. It was official International Team Legless had started the RISR 2011!!

Bruce in the support boat noted that "there is heaps [of petrol] spurting out [the air intake of the carb]". At the time I was completely focused on the tell tale that would indicate that the galleries were open enough to let some cooling water circulate and that the motor could run without seizing ... there was a pretty weak stream of water coming out of the tell tale (not exactly what I would have described as "heaps" or "spurting out" as I thought Bruce was talking about), but it was enough to mean that we could carry on. At the time, with the barely more than idle revs that we were experiencing, 'over heating' was going to be the least of our worries.

Bruce and an excited International crew on the good ship 'Legless' finally got the message through that the carb was spewing petrol out of its intake. Aside from international ecological implications, it was coming out at a rate that would waste most of our fuel supply before we had got halfway down the South Shore!

The motor stopped.

We had covered about 50 m of the 46 nautical mile race.

It was hot.

The problem???? I didn't know at the time. So I removed the u-beaut short throttle slide piston and replaced it with the original. Restarted and the motor which asthmatically moved us another 50m along the course before stalling. Next thing to do was to strip the carb ... about 5 times, making every possible adjustment [there actually aren't any] with the float and float needle or anything. After each re-assembly and re-start, we would splutter another 50 m, but each time our 'flooding', and fuel out of the carb intake issues and our 'pour' performance wasn't resolved.

I was sweating profusely from the frantic engineering tear downs and hauling on the start cord. Plus it was windless and 'hot as' ... which wasn't helping.

Bruce headed off in the support boat back to Sandy's Yacht Club, making phone calls to as many experts as possible to try and track down and nail our nasty little engine gremlin or at least find some spare parts or even motor.

While he was away, I got a few more carb tear-downs, faltering starts and 50 m gains. By this time we had at least made enough progress to get around the corner of Mangrove Bay.

Bruce finally roared back in the support boat. He had met up with Corey (known from such movies as LOOK TV Seagull racing around Bermuda) had sprinted off and got his spare carb at the expense of almost missing out on his own start. The 'spare carb' looked worse for wear, but Corey had advised Bruce "that it had run on his motor, yesterday ... it was good". We exchanged my carefully cleaned carb for Coreys, adjusted the spark plug gap and ..... the bloody motor fired up and ran without coming close to stopping for the rest of the day.

Grrrrrrrrrrr. The fractious motor was probably old enough to be the very motor that Steinbeck wrote so venemously about in the opening chapters of "The log from the sea of Cortez". However, Coreys new carb seemed to have frightened our race motor into action and put the 'gremlin to bed'.

Finally we were on our way .... I had one of the sponsors [Heineken] finest cold ones to cool off and celebrate having come halfway around the world to almost DNF within the first 300 m.

Talking to various experts afterwards about our baffling engine problem ... the motor is venerable and has been well thrashed being the veteran of numerous successful RISR races. The rings and bore were probably pretty worn and slack. That was the best explanation of why petrol might be spat out of the carb intake. What probably had happened was that the intermittent starts and 50 m dashes eventually warmed the motor up enough to take up the slack. Whatever happened, Coreys Carb was the 'Straw' that seemed to make the difference and Team Legless are indebted to his generous and selfless offer.

We owe you one ... or two ... or three, Corey. Cheers.

Picture

The fractious motor that turned a glorious start into a desperate demonstration of on the water engine stripping and re-assembling and sweaty frustration. But at the end of the day, it came through and pushed Team Legless over 46 nautical miles around the dominion of Bermuda without stopping ... happy with that.

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A "Legless tale" - the lost diaries: Plain sailing on the sea of Tranquility

After winning the war of wills (man vs machine) and having thrashed the fickle ancient 102 Seagull into obedient service ... or more accurately from tin pot luck and Divine assistance, we were well underway. The rest of our RISR 2011 race was relatively uneventful.

Before we knew it, we were passing a few landmarks that I remembered from 2007: the little holiday houses on the water; the wreck of the 'Vixen' and the point with all the standing, dead Bermudan Cedar trees. The scenery was particularly stunning in the breathless calm conditions and at times we went quite close to shore getting the ultimate 'ring side seat' views. And as we headed towards the dreaded South Shore, the water got clearer and clearer. "Gin clear" didn't begin to describe the clarity.

Our race then became just a matter of fundamental race management, engine monitoring and 'pacing' the drinks breaks:

1. Remember to top up the auxilliary tank so the motor doesn't run out of fuel (and require re-starting ... I had surely had enough of that already). I usually remembered to squeeze the bulb of the remote tank, about 30-40 times every 20 minutes. And if I did forget, Luce would remind me ... maybe once, and only once did the motor splutter as it 'almost' ran out of gas, but we caught it in the nick of time.

2. Avoid the shallow bits ... nothing that a set of polarized sunglasses and a commanding view from conning the good ship 'Legless' from the standing position couldn't handle with ease. Besides, while we were dead in the water wrestling with our reluctant motor, several classes of seagull racers and then the biggest class with a veritable herd of seagull dinghies passed us on the inside. We were able to see where they were going and follow along at a respectable distance.

3. Maintain some basic navigation: remembering that we were now following the herd, that was a no brainer. Besides the course was pretty straight forward: keep the Dominion of Bermuda on the left, seamonsters on the right, with that dip into the Great Sound to the mark off Long Island .. and no cheating by sneaking under bridges. How hard could that be??? Bruce had pointed out a few potential shoals and reefs that I probably should avoid. I had marked them clearly on the chart ... in faint pencil. So it was just a matter of figuring out where we were from landmarks and my GPS unit. I had trusted Luces' local knowledge, but eventually had to sack her as chief navigator when we passed Luces' fifth "Elbow Beach". In her defence, by that stage, we had loitered a fair distance off shore in search of 'clean water' and big fish, so the beaches did look pretty similar.

4. Drink some water with your wine .. or Race Sponsors Finest (Heinekens) or what ever was taking your fancy at the time.

5. Share "the love" and take turns at steering: The race took us the best part of 8 hours and even "Captain Araldite" himself [tends to stay glued to the tiller ... with a white knuckled grip] couldn't last that long without going nuts. So Luce and I swopped 'command' at about RISR quarterly intervals. The ancient one, relaxed the best he could on a number of cushions that Bruce had given us and generally admired the view and followed our progress on the chart. I tried to give a running commentary of sites and history of the island as we went. But with the ancient one being deaf [he couldn't hear the Bermuda frogs at night time] and the roar of the throaty 102 ... I eventually shouted myself hoarse and abandoned the commentary. But the good ship Legless and crew were happy enough ... and who wouldn't be on such a glorious day?

Since we were in touch with other boats, I could estimate that we were going at least as fast as our nearest markers, and I fancied, maybe just a touch faster. Chances of an overtaking move or two, perhaps???

Our first over take was when a red boat on the inside of us had motor problems ... that was all too easy. It meant that we were no longer last dinghy too. Ahead of us we were slowly winding in the next boat, we were to eventually overtake them along the South Shore by taking the 'out wide' option ... but I will speak about that in the next installment "The perils of the South Shore ... and the Bermuda triangle".

It was good to be well underway and making some progress on our nearest rivals and actually doing the RISR circumnavigation (instead of languishing just off the start line DNF-ing). On reflection, our motor issues demonstrated that you can't just expect to rock up to a race with a boat and a motor (even such a normally reliable old faithful 'Seagull ... Best motor for the world') and expect to barrel off to glory and great things. You need a certain amount of sea-trialling to identify and resolve any unforseen problems, make adjustments, test combinations and generally get into the 'zone'. The more sea-trialling the better.

But we all knew that, didn't we??

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A "Legless tale" - the lost diaries: The perils of the South Shore

After the excitement of the start settled, the crew relaxed into the race. Team Legless were soon faced with the notorious ‘South Shore’ leg.

Bermuda mostly lies at an angle from Sommerset in the Southwest corner to St Georges/St Davids in the Northeast corner. This more or less divides the circumnavigation into two long legs, The fabled ‘South Shore’ leg and the not so scary ‘North Shore’ leg.

In reality, there is not much between the two, because depending on which way the wind is blowing, the North Shore can be pretty jobbly at times.

The main difference is that the South Shore only has a relatively narrow band of reef protecting the shore from ocean swells. In contrast, the North Shore has an extended area of shallow reef protecting its inshore. The worst you can experience there is a choppy head wind?. Being (relatively exposed) the South Shore experiences more ‘Ocean’ states with bigger swells. Race legends speak of one pre-hurricane RISR where the swell was a massive 18’ high … some sensational surfing runs were experienced by seagull racers on that day. Some of the Wilder RISR racers had to turn back and do the run again … because they were having so much fun!

But there were no such problems for Team Legless cruising the Sea of Tranquility during RISR 2011. We occasionally got a lift from following “nearly one foot” waves that gave us a temporary boost. But our surf runs weren’t anything to get too excited about.

When running the South Shore, there are two routes. The inside reef route is deemed to be the safest option and most of our near competitors on the day were taking that route. Team Legless opted for the oceanic route on the outside of the reef.

There were two reasons for this:

The inshore route can be exposed to ‘clapotis’ (sounds rather like a venereal disease, but describes a sea state where waves from two different directions meet- usually when a swell reflects off a cliff or steep shore and causes chaotic wave patterns. Having spent a lot of time paddling an extremely tippy kayak which is nightmare scary in any sea even thinking of being ‘Clapotic’ … I can recognize clapotis from a mile away).

I fancied that on the day, the inshore route was a bit clapotic and the jobbly seas were slowing us down. This was verified by our speed over the ground recorded on our handy hand-held GPS. At least outside the reef, the waves and seas state should be cleaner.

The other reason for taking the offshore route was that it would put us into deeper water and that ought to improve our chances of catching more and bigger fish.

So off we went, threading our way over spectacular reef formations in crystal clear water. Sure enough, this tactic paid off in dividends as we soon hauled in and passed our second boat, sticking to its course: threading its way through the reefs and clapotis on the inside.

However, looking back on my fishing lures at one stage, I couldn’t help but notice them standing out like luminescent dogs [or should that be lions?] bollos in the gin clear seas. The lures were absolutely obvious in the extremely clean wake behind the good ship Legless. Even my super … ‘If you were a fish you would just have to bite’ rubber-ballyhoo-in-a-big-game-skirt lure was ‘working nicely’: regularly breaking the surface leaving a string of bubbles behind it, couldn’t attract a hit. I guess in those conditions it wasn’t surprising that we never caught a single fish (unlike in 2007 when I regularly caught fish during the race). Certainly, the fishing prize wasn’t looking too good for Team Legless. But I think fishing was particularly slow for all contestants in the RISR 2011 and not many fish if any at all were caught.

The clear and present danger of the South Shore, particularly for slow moving dinghies, is that the South Shore is invariably going to be a long downwind run. The prevailing winds are most likely to be from the South. In the northern Hemisphere that means they are going to be warm. Certainly in RISR 2007 and again in RISR 2011 the South Shore were sweltering downwind runs.

Team Legless roasted in the sun and heat for this years long, long South Shore leg.

This can be the undoing of any unwary seagull racers. You have to have some serious shade protection and drink lots of water or you will roast, get heatstroke and crash and burn … ending under a palm tree at the end of the race (if you make it that far) like some ‘pour’ hapless unmentionable person did in RISR 2007.

You can get away with imbibing a few or more well paced frosty cold Sponsors finest (Heineken) but anything stronger than that will invariably end ‘pourly’. For example, Pimms loaded with lemonade, fresh lemons, Limes and lots of ice makes a most refreshing and cooling drink. It would still be my first choice. But after sipping on peculiarly strong Pimms mix for 3-4 hours there is real potential for serious trouble down the line. Particularly for those of fragile constitutions.

But you might get away with it.

Anything else is going to be close to lethal.

Too much of a good thing was the downfall of an all girl crew on the south shore in RISR 2011, but we will have to deal with that in the next installment: The "Perils of the Bermuda Triangle".

Picture: Race boat legless (without its 102 Seagull race motor)which on the day cut a perfectly bubble and ripple free wake. The very picture of boat design perfection but not what fishing on the day needed

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