Port Dover- Maytham Regatta

Simon, Danielle, George and I organized the Maytham Regatta for the Port Dover Yacht Club Racing Division this weekend. This is the third year we have done it and we always wonder whether we will have enough people show up and eat everything we have bought and prepared. We also worry that perhaps more people, than have indicated, will come and we wont have enough food. Miraculously, we always seem to have about 60 people and each year we have got better at estimating the amount of food and alcohol that we need.
The wind gods were in fine form this weekend. It was the first regatta I have ever been involved in were boats were withdrawing due to sea sickness. There was also the usual difficulties with broken hardware and ripped sails.

We saw a great variety of weather over the two day event: winds gusting over 25 knots (that's about 35 kilometres), rain, stormy skies, thunder (no lightning was reported though) and sunny skies.
George sailed on Rhapsody and I sailed on Between the Sheets; the boat we visited and stayed on in the Bahamas in February. Neither are actually in the racing division and neither actually completed any of the races. However we went out and sailed in some pretty hairy conditions each day, complete with our sea sickness pills and foul weather gear.

On Saturday we had very little sail out, both the main and the head sail furl, and we were
still constantly sailing at an extreme angle.

There were some pretty impressive white caps and often the boats hulls
would disappear in the troughs of the waves.

(My apologies to Heather, she has said that she feels nauseous when she looks at some of the sailing photos.)

I love that my new camera will actually take pictures into the sun.

Port Dover fishing boat heading back into harbour.

Saturday we had one long "around the Bay" race and on Sunday, 2 shorter "around the buoys" races. Afterwards we all got together back at the Yacht Club for a BBQ, drinks, raffle (for the Sailing School) and presentation of awards. Everyone was quite tired from 2 days of dealing with heavy weather but there were stories to be told and experiences to share.