Spot on with my guess about where the boat was letting in water. Just a hairline crack of about 5 cms but that was enough on the plane to let in all that water. Even more worrying was that when I stuck a screwdriver in to get out any lose stuff, the crack doubled in size really easily. At some stage all that old filler is going to have to come out, but that's a job for next spring/summer.
I used a West system epoxy with some of the white filler in to fill the crack. After rubbing it down today I decided to get out on the water for a bit but the wind had dropped to almost nothing. As is usual at my lake the wind would fill in a bit and then drop so I decided to go out for the race.
Only 7 other boats were on the line so it wasn't going to do my series average any harm even if I just finished. The port side was favoured so I lined up there bang on the line, not wanting to move to far away from the line as its embarrassing when you're a few boat lengths away and the wind drops, leaving you struggling to cross the line when everyone else is away.
I was lined up a bit to bang on and was OCS, so had to go back. I wasn't hugely upset as I could see the windward mark, which was only about 10 boat lengths away, was in a shadow and the middle of the fleet was already caught up around it. I went wide around the bunch and caught a little puff with a clear lane and pulled back 5 places. What is it they say? If you're not OCS occasionally you're not trying hard enough!
But as is the way in these fickle conditions, it didn't take too long to go tits up. I got myself in a nice little hole and then started going backwards. A couple of other tactical errors mainly associated with not reading the shifts (as far as they are readable) left me going backwards even further, so I ended up with precisely my bottom line - 8Th!
I've really decided to throw myself into a weight loss campaign before Christmas so I have a new mantra: 10k in 10 weeks. The first week was good but this week has been difficult and I've learnt something really interesting. I've been feeling really tired and listless and I've found it even more difficult than usual to do my morning training sessions. However, looking back at my nutrition profiles for the last few days I found that I really overdid protein at the weekend (went over to my dad's to watch the Rugby World Cup quarter final. He lives with my sister and they are all real carnivores!) at the expense of a lot of carbohydrate. As the week's gone on and I've been eating my usual 55-60% I've started to feel better. I thought that as I wasn't full on training, imbalances such as this one wouldn't have much effect, but now I'm not so sure. Of course, there might be other reasons for my lack of oomph but this looks to be the root of the problem.
A whole weekend on the water to look forward to - Disabled sailor's club on Saturday and a Thames Valley Grand Prix event at Burghfield on Sunday. Better make sure I get some extra carbs in before Saturday!
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