Woke up this morning to sun, which soon turned into drizzle with a rising wind. We didn't need to sail today as we'd already secured 2nd place overall, but we made the decision to go out anyway. Start was on the Royal Yacht Squadron line at 1120, but we were out by 1030 to watch the class zero start. With the wind gusting up to 24 knots the first few starts were exciting to watch, even though a lot of boats were already packing up, so didn't bother coming out. By our start a heavy rain had set in and the wind was consistently 20 knots, gusting 25. We had a great start, beating West down to the first mark, staying ahead of Amey Love Shack, and soon catching up to the leader. 5 marks later we were head to head with Amey Love Shack at a bear-away mark, with a very close rounding. We got the spinnaker up, running neck and neck with Amey Love Shack with the wind gusting up to 35 knots, then after several rolls, we broached severely, with the yacht tipping almost completely horizontal, and completely submerging Greg, the Navigator, who was on the rail at the time underwater, we then crash jibed and lost the spinnaker sheets. With the spinnaker flying out in front of us and no way of getting it down, we had to send James up the mast in a sling to attach a line to the top of the spinnaker halyard. By the time we'd got James back down, and retrieved the spinnaker we'd been overtaken by the top 5 boats and exhausted ourselves, so decided to call it a day and retire. Seems like we weren't the only ones with problems as there were quite a few yachts with broken masts and tattered sails in the marinas when we got in.
Because of the retirement today we ended up with 61 points overall, retaining second place. Off to the prize giving tonight to pick up our trophy!
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