GBRT : West Indies 2013

Because of the numbers of entries and the size of the range, shooting in Barbados is being split, during the individual stages, such that each country's shooters compete either in the morning or in the afternoon each day, but not both. Today was the first of GB's afternoon shooting days, so it was a day when we could enjoy a morning's relaxation... in theory. In practice, we had to get up early to go to the Opening Ceremony in our "Number 2" uniform. 

There, we watched Jonathan Hull and others raise their nation's flags and listened to a few speeches, before the Chief of Defence Staff fired the opening shot - a 7 o'clock cooking bull. Then we headed back to the hotel, where most of us waited for one lost vanload of team-mates in order to hold a team meeting. And then we relaxed for an hour or so before quickly eating and moving to the range for an afternoon's shooting. The Aussies and Canadians were finishing off as we arrived.

Conditions were much more comfortable for shooting than at our previous venues, helped in large part by a decent breeze off the Atlantic - so right wind was the order of the day today. At 300 yards there was wind from one o'clock that was steadier than it looked; at 500 it was sometimes squarer, sometimes finer but most of the team made a good fist of their shoot.  Top of the pile were Jon Tapster,  David Luckman and Gaz Morris on 125.20 (maximum 125.25).

Final order of business was to pack up our rifles into gun boxes so that a platoon of soldiers on a big truck could spirit them away for the night. Well, almost final... Tom still had some armouring to do for our hosts! So the return to the hotel for some of us was after dark, at 7pm.

There's a big, loud party in the park happening near our hotel this evening; but I get the feeling most people will be taking it easy...