The start

The start of the race felt pretty strange. We were pretty close to first over the line which showed a remarkable amount of forward planning for us. Indeed we seemed to have a good 20 minutes to spare before the gun went off.
There was a fair breeze at the start but this soon died off and we came to a stop in the waves created by some motor boats at the start-as did most of the rest of the fleet. We briefly had the oars out and were the first crew to get the spinnaker out but both were soon stowed as we all hit a pretty brisk force 5 northerly.
We've had a wet couple of hours sitting with our legs over the side of the boat to try to keep her upright to balance the force of the sails with the weight of the boat. We are now close to bardsey sound at the western tip of the lleyn peninsula. We are trying to work out whether we want more sail up or less as the wind is changing strength from moment to moment. Our boat seems quite happy to have the full sail up with geoff at the helm so maybe we will stick with that.
We are probably about 4 hours from caernarfon and so will probably climb snowdon in the dark. We think a lot of the boats will get caught in the tides at the swellies after the snowdon run. We are thus not overly worried about not being near the lead on the water at the moment.