It was a very welcome return of the International Dragon fleet to Abersoch after so many years. We had got 43 boats from all over the world to compete in the Edinburgh Cup.
Mr and Mrs from Russia were competing against each other and the rest of the fleet, both were very competitive but their RIB won the glam award for the week and their crew showed its paces with an early evening trip to Wicklow, Ireland for Guinness and a steak, 3 hours there and back!
Aussies were out, South Africans, Japanese, Danes, Portugese, Irish, Welsh, English and Stavros from Cornwall all contributed to the colour of the event!
Blue skies, afternoon breezes and great hospitality were a strong cocktail for exciting and competitive racing.
Someone has to come last and each day the lucky loser was presented with the now famous Wot Tac, I say now fanous as by the end of the week they became highly sort after. Only one person could win one once so several boats had them by the end of the week, clearly the simple lessons it can teach were being learnt!
Event organiser, Rob Riddle was also handing them out to anyone who misbehaved or spoke out of turn at each evening’s price giving so a few naughty boys got them and were equally delighted with their prize. Stavros, the hardened pro, got more than one and was said to be amazed at how simple the Wot Tac was and that no one should ever have an excuse for not knowing where the bias is in any start line now.
We on Musketeer were the only complete novices in the fleet with me having never helmed one before, my son Henry had never been on one and Eleri had crewed 2-3 days on one last year and it showed! The learning curve was steep with almost 50 different ropes to pull to tweak the mast and sails to the precise location for every variation in sea state and wind speed it was always going to be a big challenge so we were delighted with one top ten finish but that was a rare peak!
