Palamos Xmas race

We set off for Spain on saturday the 13th, two RYA Transit vans loaded with 5 49ers and one rib. The ferry arrived at Caen in france at 6am and we started the 12 hour drive down to Palamos. The two Vans quickly chose seperate routes and the racing started earlier than expected! Unfortunately for us the quickest route calculated by our computer took us down the N75, straight though the central Masiv region, the first snowflakes started to fall 6 or seven hours into the drive, but as we steadily climbed the snow soon became heavy, half an hour later we were two cars behind a snow plow, the only thing keeping the highway open! Unfortunately an average speed of about 20mph gave an easy victory to van Van2! in fact we were some 6 hours later than the other guys, having experienced a road closure with 150mile diversion, 2 very stressful hills, wheel spinning from side to side on sheet ice, and the experience of having to buy then fit snow chains! Van 2 had a journey, we had an adventure!
We had an easy first day in palmos, rigging up and washing the boat, but got straight into training the next day. The med had some large cross wind swells rolling in, very new conditions for us in the 49er. We had 2 excellent days training in the new conditions, and were very encouraged by two 3rds in the small practice races Harvey laid on.
Day one of racing dawned with 12 - 15knt winds, and relatively flat waters. race 1 started well for us, starting on port at the committe boat end we rounded the top mark 4th and staid there from start to finish, a good way to begin our 49er campaigning. Trying to keep racing simple we attempted race 2 in the same manner, but were caught on port tack by a late stb starter and were forced to tack leaving us down the pan in twentieth......... This was to be the pattern for our week, the races we started in ok or good shape we would finish well in the top 5, the races where we had disastrous starts or a major boathandling error (we suffered capsizes in about 4-5 seperate races!) we had deep finishes. Which led to our Final finish position off 11th place, two points out of the medal race. A very encouraging start after 3 months of sailing, with about 3 more months before Palma regatta, the first important event for ourselves.
A quick pack up allowed us to get back on the road for home, we had changed our ferry to the next morning, in an attempt to get us home with more time to spare ahead of xmas. Having left ourselves about 14 hours to make the 12 hour journey (18hours on the way out!) we drove through the night having taken rather more care in our route selection we made the ferry with an hour and a half to spare and more importantly 5 minutes ahead of van 2!