If you can find the link to the SailMelbourne website, and visit the photo gallery, there are about 4 pages of pictures that very graphically illustrate the choppy conditions we were sailing in that first day. So far, there are no pictures of us, someting I am quite relieved about, as we were not in top form that day. Friday New Years Eve is an absolute Chamber of Comerce day here in Melbourne, wind out of the north and Warm . Northerly winds are offshore winds here in this part of Port Phillips Bay, so its going to be a day of shifty and fluky winds until the seabreeze fills in this afternoon. Races are postponed until about 11AM, and then they send us off the beach. On the Worlds course the race committee got a race started, Tom and I got a good start and rounded A-Mark in good position, got around C-Mark in 8th place and then the race committee put out the abandon race flag due to "unfair conditions" and sent us all back to the beach. Tom and I were laughing as we went back to the beach, thinking that these are GOOD conditions at home in Colorado, at least the wind was blowing even though it was shifting around a bit. Finally about 3PM the seabreeze fills in out of the south, and off the beach we go again. We manage to get in two races before the wind dies off for the evening. Tom skippered the second race, and manages to bring home our best finsh to date. I've been telling him its just that he has a better crew than I do (so he doesn't get all swell headed on me) Quite honestly tho, he has been sailing the boat better than I have. His instincts seem to be a bit better than mine when it comes to picking which side of the course to sail, and his tiller hand seems to be a bit better. Mike and Nancy can be really quite proud of Tom, as am I. Our over all position is improved to 22nd out of 28 boats. Not stellar by any stretch of the imagination, but in this group, I'm just glad not to be "Tail End Charlie" After the racing we head over to the hotel for a quick shower and then back down to the Yacht Club for New Years Eve Dinner and drinks. Quite a crowd at Dinner this evening, and we enjoy the company of our Aussie hosts until about 11:30. Our hotel is right on the banks of the Yarra River, and there is a large fireworks display scheduled for Midnight, so we take the Tram back to the hotel to watch the festivities.
New Years Day is a scheduled lay day, and after breakfast, Tom and I join fellow Hobie 18 Sailors Andrew and Marie Nelson, for a ride in the surrounding countryside and to Phillips Island. Australia is a very uncluttered country, clean, very little if any roadside litter and very few billboards along the hiways. All in all it was a delightful day touring along the coastline east from Melbourne. We stopped for lunch in a small resort town named Cowe on the north side of Phillips island. A very pleasant little resort town. It is so unusual for us to experience Christmas and New Years in a place where part of celebrating the new year is a trip to the beach in shorts with sunscreen and beach towels, and while it has been a very enjoyable experience, I think I would kind of miss the "traditional" Christmas/New Years I am accustomed to. It is hard to believe that tomorrow will be our last day of racing. The weather forecast calls for morning breeze from the east @ 10 knots changing to a 20 knot seabreeze in the afternoon. Hopefully, we will get in another four races before the sailing part of our adventure comes to an end. We will have a presentation dinner tomorrow evening, so I will attempt to get off a short note between the end of racing and the beginning of dinner to let you know how our day goes. Stephen and Tom Group Home http://www.TheBeachcats.com Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/beachcats/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
