Workshops

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

One Second

An awful lot can happen in one second. One second was all it took for NZ to lose race 7 of the America's Cup and that is that until the next one. The lead changed several times and NZ had a penalty from which we thought they would never recover but Alinghi fluffed it and the Kiwis got in front, did their 360 and almost got over the line in time apart from the one second. Oh well - all rich boys' toys. I find dinghy sailing more exciting.




At least we can say we know a couple of the sailors on Alinghi. When we were teaching in Tokoroa, we used to sail a Monarch 18 on Lake Rotoiti every weekend in the summer. It went by the name of Flutterby! Hook up on Friday after school and off we went. Fish and chips in Rotorua and launch the boat with the boys inside in bed and sail around to our little hideaway bay with a torch to shine on the sails in case anyone came by, and a glass of wine in our hands. Below is the view we woke up to in the mornings.



It was always a super weekend - you could sail to the hot springs on the other side and other regulars came most weekends as well, including the Phipps family - Dean is one of the Alinghi crew. He and his brother sailed P classes and our kids went onto Mudlarks because we came to Perth. We did a sail on the Bay of Islands with them one year and had a wonderful christmas lunch on the beach drinking champagne and eating glazed ham.






It was a great place for kids to have fun - we had our books to read and listened to the request show on Radio Rotorua or whatever it was and usually Badjelly the Witch read by Spike Milligan was requested.

It was the first time we took part in yacht racing - for as you know whenever 2 yachts are going alongside each other there will always be a race - in fact that is the same with everything. We are all very competitive by nature. We were absolute amateurs never knowing what we were doing but getting there in the end.




We learnt to sail with a text book in hand and got into strife a few times when things happened before we got to that page in the book. That's not a bad way to get through life and I can tell you that you do learn by experience! And quickly....

The other sailor on Alinghi is Murray Jones - I don't know him but Ian taught hin at Tawa College - now that was even longer ago.

Sorry about the photo quality - we don't actually have many of that time but what we have are in bad shape and if we ever find the negatives something more positive will happen

2 comments:

Leanne said...

Brad Butterworth described it as having your heart dug out with a spoon...not sure it would be any better or worse with any other implement but it's gotta be worse for him than for us. Felt quite ill yesterday but hopeful for another challenge in 2 years...let the games begin!

Penny said...

I couldnt believe it was lost by a second but there you are. Your photos of your boat look much like our trailer sailer we used to spend many happy hours sailing down the coorong until the children left home and John decided a boat was too much like money down the drain when he could fish with other people. Just been out taking photos of the wild weather here.

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