Monday 31 May 2010

YCW Cherbourg_2010_Rattler.mpg

Cherbourg for the weekend

We had a great race on Rattler to Cherbourg on friday - second over the water and on handicap but not by much. Draig won.

We came back on sunday upwind neck and neck with Draig. Some video above.

Tuesday 25 May 2010

Mitchell Trophy - sat 22nd May

Stuart and I entered this race double handed (well three handed if you count Mich' Desj' the autohelm). A real struggle to the windward mark saw us round in third, but standing on way past the layline helped in the fickle southerly zephyrs. We fetched into the mark with good speed. Unfortunately the breeze died to nothing and we slipped into a race on the tide with Folio, them waddling dead down with no air in the kite - and us gybing zig zagging trying to keep the kite full. They won - something to remember.

We thought it was more gracious to retire and have a beer. In fact there were only two finishers - RWH and Foxed Again. We towed some squibs back in, which was our good deed for the day!
Loads of nice boats were in Weymouth from Royal Southampton for their double race. Moondog (Laser28) stormed their class both ways - brilliant. See their report here: http://www.gbr7076.biz/m/index.html

Saturday 15 May 2010

Rear Admiral's Cup - Race 1

The Rear Admiral's Cup is for teams of three boats from the local sailing clubs: Castle Cove (CCSC), Royal Dorset (RDYC), Royal Naval Sailing Association (RNSA) and Weymouth Sailing Club (WSC). Today was the first race of a series of three and the WSC team was Sole Bay, Folio and FarrOut. We had an excellent afternoon scoring first, fifth and second.

Again a good showing from the FarrOut crew finishing second over the water to Iduna (X332), and our new sails were fantastic.

Friday 14 May 2010

Perfect Conditions - Thurs 1/3

Well the third race of the thursday evening IRC series and we were third, narrowly having beaten Scoline by 3 seconds corrected time.

We had a great 12-15knot breeze from about 240 degrees with a windward mark of "D" and a laid leeward mark. The race officer sent the PY class around this mark to starboard and the IRC class to port - entertaining. Down the first run we had a fine tussle with Scoline as she flew her kite stbd pole and we were port pole.

We had all 6 of the regular crew onboard and it's such a delight when everyone knows the boat and does their level best to get her as fast as possible.

Wednesday 12 May 2010

Shiny Sails

Last thursday's race - Weymouth Sailing Club's IRC series Thurs 1/2, was the first chance we had of flying our new mainsail. We didn't do well in the race mainly due to using the No. 1 headsail when I think the No.3 would have got us higher and faster (plus that's brand new as well).
The new sails are from Hyde and built in Dimension Polyant's X10 and X15 aramid cloth.
The new main fitted perfectly and thanks to Wooderz of Hyde Sails for that. Hopefully try the new No. 3 out this thursday.
We're also racing on saturday this week representing WSC in this year's Rear Admiral's Cup series. Hopefully we can take that cup from the Royal Dorset!