The Fidessa Fastwave team decamped to Devon to compete in the Torbay and Dartmouth regattas at the end of August, and thoroughly enjoyed both regattas both afloat and ashore. The less serious nature of the event lent itself to considerable crew rotation and guest appearance, enabling about twenty different crew-members over the course of the regatta.

Regulars throughout the series were the owner-drivers, Vicki, Christos and Chris trimming, Rob Ball grinding, Wendy Layton in the pit, Richard Glen in sewer, Roger and Richy on the bow, Bob navigating and local-fireman/melges sailor Steve on mast.  Adam Cowley and Greg O'Hagan added experience in pit and tactics early in the week, giving way to Mark, Bres, Bres's dad and Karen from the frozen north as the regatta wore on.  (or as they wore out).

The Torbay regatta was won with 4 wins from 6 starts, with the winners of the other 2 races "Hazard Chase" and "Mustang Sally" sharing second place in a class of 7 boats.  Fidessa Fastwave The boat also was part of the joint-winning team in the impressively-named "Torbay Admiral's Cup" along with "Eye-Eye" and "Ali 2".   (When both the boat and he were much younger Mark won Cowes Week on Eye-Eye in 1992, when she was owned by Robbie-Cameron Davies, of I-Site fame).

The Dartmouth regatta saw 3 wins and 2 seconds garnered from a competitive fleet of 18 boats, with the oddly-named Dehler 39 "Deliverance 2" and the Reflex 38 "Cougar" picking up the other two race wins, and also the second and third spots.  Being quite a bit quicker than the rest of Class 1 (the next highest-rated boat was the 11.3 "Kerisma") we had to build up considerable leads on the water in order to be sure of a handicap victory. An example of this was on the Friday race (2nd at Dartmouth) where a lead on the water of 30 minutes over second-placed Deliverance equated to a 10-minute victory on handicap. Wins in other races were closer and hard-fought, but all were savoured.  The final race was an Olympic triangle sailed in over 20 knots of breeze, enabling Fidessa to fly down the runs at over 14 knots under S4 spinnaker.  The course required us to pass through a short finishing line on eachlap, and it took great planning to negotiate a safe and sporting passage through and around the dozens of slower boats on the race-course.

Socially the regatta was highly enjoyable with the Red Arrows display on Saturday evening being enjoyed from the deck of the DK46 - where the liferaft locker was converted into a drinks cooler.  All of the crew enjoyed the evening, although one has little memory of it.

Many thanks to Vicki for organising the event, and to Chris and Pete for providing the chariot.