Elixir - Elliott 780

What is a regatta without an award?  On Elixir, we have our own hotly contested award that celebrates courage, commitment and team spirit.  It’s called the VB Tallie Award.  VB is a beer, a Victorian beer and as beers go, well, we Queenslanders find it pretty hard to stomach.  A tallie is a large bottle of the brew.  So a VB tallie is larger dose.  You need special character to man up to a VB tallie - so when searching around for a fitting award…actually, we were at the bottlo provisioning with good beer and rum when Fred suggested we get some (I think to show us how tough he is).  So a bottle was purchased and the legend was created. 

Each day points are awarded to crew members who show extra ordinary selfishness, who take one for the team or just do something so stupid that they deserve to be punished by having to drink the stuff.

Needless to say, our Fred took out the inaugural award last year - perhaps helped by the fact he drank it on the second night but also largely due to his perfect calling of lifts, knocks and general race strategy - just ask him.

Just quietly, he is probably on the inside running to back up this year - but we will have to wait and see.

Boats.

The sports boats for this year’s regatta are pretty hot.  There are 3 Elliott 780’s again this year which is great for us.  It is always nice to have a same type boat to peg yourself against.  Out of these three, Elixir is the porky one being the heaviest by over 100 kg.  There are also 7 winged boats entered with 2 Stealth 8’s and one Stealth 7, a Bethwaite 79′er and 2 of its derivatives the Sports 8’s and I can’t remember the other one.  In addition, there is one Stealth 7.8 (2.5 m wide and wingless), a Thompson 8, an Elliott 7 and a couple of Melges 24’s.  For the first time, we are racing under a measurement based rating system called SMS (sportsboat measuring system).  It should be really good.

Drama already.  One key crew member (there are only 5 of us so everyone is key - but it makes them feel so much more important) has flagged an issue with an old injury.  The shoulder is somewhat wreaked and there are rumours that last minute physio’s are only going to be able write a note indicating that said crew member will need to be excused from kite sheet work.  This is an early blow to an otherwise faultless preparation.  Pressure will be on to watch just which hand is used to drink his beer with but maybe the note from the physio will explain that lifting a beer to one’s mouth is totally different to pulling in a kite sheet?

Anyway, here are a couple more shots of Elixir.