GBRT : West Indies 2013

For the Jamaica/Guyana veterans, today really started at 11.30 pm last night when the remainder of Team GB and several WAGS arrived after almost 24 hours on the go, having had a 6 hour stop over in Barbados - not as good as it sounds as they were confined to the airport, poor weary travellers with only Banks beer to comfort them. Anyway despite the journey, they all arrived in good cheer ready for a refreshing drink or two after a very long and tiring day travelling. So much so that the hotel bar had to stay open for at least an extra two hours!

There was no acclimatisation day for the new arrivals and shooting began at 10 am with a 2&7 at 300 yards - simple you might think. Wrong. The steel-cased JHC ammunition was not compatible with everyone's rifles and in several cases would not extract after firing. Jonathan H had to use a cleaning rod for every shot which was never going to result in a good score (a good excuse, for a change; Ross, Chris W and Matt suffered similar fates). Fortunately he had a spare gun,
which was just as well. Our teenage superstar, Chloe, outshot all her elders with a very tidy 35.6. Others had varied success at 500 & 600 yards with a nice 50.7 from Ian Shaw at 500 and 50s from Chris Watson and David Luckman at 600; Chris top-scored for the day dropping only 3 points in total. So much for needing acclimatisation!

At the end of the day, travel back to the hotel was via a mixture of shuttle buses (because we still don't have enough vehicles) and lifts from kind locals like Clarion. One of our later departures was team cripple, post-knee-op Matt, who struggled back from 600 yards to the smallbore range with all his kit only to discover the eyepiece cap from his Leica telescope (frankly his only important piece of kit - the scope, that is, not the lens cap) was missing. On returning to the range to look for it, he found it... in two pieces! It had encountered, during the minute before his arrival, the blade of the only sit-on lawnmower he had ever seen in use on a firing point anywhere in the world!

The day finished with a superb party, with copious food and drink, at the home of Norris Gomez - a man who certainly knows how to throw a party - and his wife Gaby. Some of his family members were equally adept at making us feel welcome - some of them old friends. More of the same tomorrow with individual shoots followed by a team match on Tuesday. Phase three of the tour is going well.

Quote of the day from Mr. Watson "Nigel is choking on Norris's nuts!"