Checked in and Measured

After my very long day yesterday (and the day before), I fell asleep at 6 p.m. and didn't wake until 8 a.m. Hopefully that got me over the jet lag quickly. I headed over the Hayling Island Sailing Club to get my assigned boat and check in. I got my boat assignment but none of the boats were in any sort of order, so I had to pull the back of the cover off every boat until I found mine, one of the last I looked at of course. I was shocked at the very poor condition of so many of these boats, they are all new and only used at the Standards Worlds last week. My boat had a large chip in the gel on the deck, and scratches all down the starboard side of the boat. It was also missing the bailer plug and the transom plug. Apparently I was lucky enough to get blades in fairly good shape, from what I understand, the blades have all been awful. The GRP foils here in Europe are very different to the North American and Australian GRP foils. The Euro ones are all two piece, and the seam is very poorly done, with a crack line all the way around the edge of both foils. I am not impressed at all with the Euro boats.

Rigged the boat, and noticed that the hiking straps are longer, I went through the measurement process and everything measured well, and again I should consider myself lucky because apparently there were a lot of battens that were too long. Checked in at the registration desk, got my SIs and wrist band, for the three social events associated with this regatta. They were custom printing the t-shirts, but I really didn't want to wait in the line, it was taking a very long time, and that was by far the longest line.

The tides here are massive, and I have been told that if you want to take a short practice sail and come back in, you have to go out and come back in on a slack tide, if you go out on an outgoing tide, you will not make it back to the club until the tide changes. It is quite amazing seeing the harbors here at low tide, it is really incredible how many millions of gallons of water flow in and out of the harbors twice a day. Most keel boats on moorings are high and dry at low tide, hence the huge number of boats with full keels or double keels so the boats do not fall over at low tide. I suppose low tide is a good time to clean the bottom. The current right in front of the club is massive, it is quite incredible seeing a keel boat doing 6 knots but clearly making 12 over the bottom.

For some reason many of the USA boats are all together on the boat park, so it was nice to see some of the US competitors that I see at the North American regattas. Nick Place from Corsica River is here and getting checked in, and he is parked right next to my boat.

Tomorrow is a practice day, and I need to decide if I should go up to Oxford to spend time with some friends. Today is a English Premiership football (soccer) match at the Portsmouth Football Club stadium between Portsmouth and Ipswitch. The stadium is right next to my hotel in Portsmouth, and it took me a very long time to get into town with all the traffic for the match, and the hotel is currently completly surrounded by soccer supporters from both Portsmouth and Ipswitch. The Kentucky Fried Chicken by the stadium was completely full, with a line that went out the door, all soccer fans.

The roads are all narrow here, very narrow with no shoulders. All the street vendors look very American with signs saying "Hamburgers and Hot Dogs", even if they sell fish and chips. The bread here is much better than back home, and the sandwiches are very tasty. Getting used to driving on the left is not too bad, but I still tend to go to the left side of the car to get in. I usually nonchalantly put something in the passenger seat and then walk to the other side like I meant to do it all the time. I have been unable to find a single caffeine free diet drink. No diet sprite, diet ginger ale, diet 7up, if on a diet, you have a choice between diet Coke or diet Pepsi. The Kentucky Fried Chicken only offer corn and fries as sides, no coleslaw, mashed potatoes, beans or anything else. No extra crispy, but the original recipe tastes the same. I find it funny they call it original recipe when there is no alternate recipe, like extra crispy in the US. They don't have popcorn shrimp, but they do have popcorn chicken. I think we call those nuggets in the US.

I have noticed that businesses focus very little on customer service here. The customer is always wrong, and workers have no problem just ignoring you and walking away if they do not like what you are asking for. Having worked the retail trade, I can assure you that many people in the US have been fired for treating people the way I have been treated by many retail workers here. I consider myself lucky that when I was stuck on the side of the road for 5 hours waiting for Hertz, the people I met were all extremely nice, and funnily many of them either had lived in the US or Canada or were actually now living in the US. A very nice police officer stopped by where I was, and made a telephone call to Hertz telling them to immediately get someone out there because the car was a hazard. One would think that would make them jump, but no, they still took another 4 hours to get there, and then had the gall to charge me 180 pounds, ($300) for the flat tire, I will be fighting that with Hertz since the spare was the wrong one for the car and I could not change the tire and drive on.

I will head back to the club this evening for the opening dinner and ceremony, first of the three social events. Thursday is a mid-week barbeque, and Sunday is the closing ceremony and awards.