Well there's a photo....

Duellist with Wattsie on the helm, Garnett trimming, Basher on keyboards and me calling where to be... Happy days and a great shot.

I was the heady age of 22 then... without a penny to my name, but having a wail of a time sailing in GK's and winning the golden hind (SW Area travellers trophy) as crew in the same year in Enterprises, round the island race on a racy First 30, plus several cross channel races to Alderney on Duellist, and I bought my first keelboat (Hunter 19) with money I borrowed from Mr Barclay's for a car loan.... hah hah..

Seem to remember the Falmouth regatta was a somewhat boozy afair (and in thse days you were allowed to have one man down a day with a monster hangover laying in a bunk, as long as the offender tacked to the high side each time we tacked, and of course able to pack kites on the uphill bits, without leaving breakfast in the turtle.....).

Bunch of guys sailing GK's then were mad, using them as oldie goldy stripped out racers (sort of)... they were all bonkers chopper pilots out of RAF Culdrose. Trip to the Pandora Inn one night ended up with one boat losing it's outboard off the back and having a leisurely sail back until 4.00am... no torch and no nav.lights....didn't matter - they had Gin on board

We were the only boat with an inboard, so we went like a brick.... except when it honked with a long upwind passage race. We stormed the fleet in our new Mike Mac baggy cut tri-radial No.1...... of course dinner that night was fish & chips, bottle(s) of Merrydown (first man with a toe on the dock ran to offie....the other guys sort out lines and fenders), and lots of pints in club to celebrate. I was packing kites with breakfast in the launch bag the next day.... food poisoning y'know...

A thing of the past (almost)..... maybe I have Slingshot to re-live my mispent youth....

Cheers,

Keith in Singapore

Can't go back quite that far, but 1992 and another Falmouth week / GK24 nationals, first year with Gate Krasher 4. Memories of Roger on Folly 2 with a <censored> big kite that hung down almost to the deck over the pulpit, but was apparently still "in class"....remember Foyled again retiring cos we overtook him and we...heaven forbid...had an inboard engine fitted.

Plus the champagne race....45 knots plus over the deck and we retired to the Pandora (seems to be *the* place to go for GK24 crews). Water fights with no wind on the last day, and being the only inboard engined boat we were trying to dump buckets of water over everyone elses outboard.

Those were the days !!!!