Koh Samui Day Five. Zig, Zag, Zoot, but a Tonga in the boot.

Well, the best news of the day was that we held off Baby Tonga... just!  Entering the last race, Race Ten, four points ahead of them, we lost all those four points as they finished four places ahead of us.  Equal on points, they count back to determine the winner and we pipped them by one place.  So: they beat us at King's Cup on count-back and we beat them in Samui on count-back.  Some symmetry there.

Tactician Cookie, looks for breezes.

Otherwise, our last race day was not covered in glory.  The Race Officer, Ross Chisholm, set us off on Course 9, an islands course to the south around the reef and back north. There was a bit of argy-bargy at the start, we were caught boat end, when we wanted to be leeward near the pin, were OCS, ducked back and came out mid fleet.  It was downhill from there as the winds died from 13knots at the off to 3-4 knots at the bottom mark.
We zigged when we should have zagged, hoped for shifts didn't happen and we finished mid fleet, down the list on corrected.
We were worried Tonga may have pipped us; so, apart from the ordinary race, the day finished well when we saw results of our pipping them on countback.
"Poetic justice", says Grant. "Revenge", says Stevo. And indeed it is, as they took first to our second on countback at the King's Cup when it was the Cup itself in contention.
A few random photos, taken by Catherine on board for the race, for which thanks to C:

Highest rating boat in the fleet, GP42 Wan Ma Rang ("One More Prang").  Nice boat.

Jollity at pre-start.  Richard in navigation mode. Digger checks out the competition.

Jing in concentration mode, as Cam takes the wheel for a bit