Yesterday – naturally full of anticipation after our spectacular performance of Thursday (now an official 5th place because one of the boats ahead of us was over the line at the start of the race and failed to go back & legitimise itself by re-crossing it) had taken us to 18th overall out of 31 – we slogged home in third last place.

Once again the cause lay in a rank strategic decision. On Thursday our masterstroke had been to avoid, albeit inadvertently, the mass wrong-reading of the tide conditions at the mouth of the harbour that afflicted everyone else. Yesterday the reverse happened. At roughly the same place, with us then fifth last, the majority of the fleet did what we’d done the previous day … and for some reason we did what they’d done. Wrong!!! Puverised by the tide, at the next mark we were last by a quarter of a mile.

The remaining (60%) of the race was a procession with us playing catch-up. You have to put it down to experience. We sailed the boat well both days, but on one we had a stroke of luck and did exceptionally well … and the next we made a horlicks of a single but important decision and were back where some might say we belonged, at the back of the fleet.

I don’t know what the final overall results will be, but my impression is that we shall come about 20th … and be the second highest-placed boat in the third & bottom division. Not too bad for a boat skippered by an eighty-one year old and (on two days) by a member of his crew.

My brother, family and friend of one son had appeared for the day and so after lunch we played a doubles tennis tournament. Partnered by my soon-to-be fifteen year old nephew, I duly went down with all guns blazing 6-4 in the final to Pippi and the guest, who turned out to be a club player at his age level with a tremendous serve and a fair line in Agassi-like whipped forehands & backhands.

Today we shall be tidying up the house before returning to civilisation.

It may be an age thing but – under local council orders - my father has a fixation about depositing different types of rubbish (e.g. cans, bottles, plastics, cardboard) in various different skips & containers that have been placed randomly all over the county. Having spent most of his day combing the house for errant detritus and making regular speeches about the necessity to put the right type of rubbish in the right bag lest the council issue him with a criminal record & fine, he then sets off on “a rubbish run” (each lasting an hour or so) once, twice or even three times a day – and sometimes in his Aston Martin.

I think it is disgraceful of the local council to terrorise senior citizens in this manner, irrespective of whether it is part of some well-meaning but futile ‘green’ policy. I’ve been to their main tip many times and am fully aware that, after you have thrown your different types of rubbish through the ‘correct’ plastic-strip-protected holes, it all goes into one gigantic pile anyway. Before departing for France my father made me promise that I would do the necessary “rubbish runs” – instead I shall follow my brother’s example and pack my rubbish into one black sack and take it home with to dispose of it as per normal at home.