WSC members win trophy in double handed Figaro.

Us and Rattler on arrival

The prestigious RDYC class 1 offshore race to Cherbourg was won by WSC members Richard Veale and Jez Rees sailing the Figaro Solo offshore race boat Groupe Partouche....... Sounds good doesn't it, you can dream....well that's what Rattler used to be called and Richard and I were really looking forward to a double handed race to Cherbourg, trouble is we couldn't find what was going on, there was some talk of the race happening on saturday but the weather was best on the advertised date of friday and we'd taken a day off work anyway.

In all the years that Rich and I have been sailing together we've never raced offshore with just the two of us, usually an adjudicator has been required in the past. Only the night before we'd been adversaries as he sailed Rattler fully crewed in the thursday evening IRC series against us on FarrOut.

We managed to get a start at 0830 along with RDYC boats “Wahinee Waves” and “Brown Eyed Girl”, Rattler shot off under the old Groupe Partouche spinnaker and we successfully gybed as we crossed the bay on our 152deg rhum line to Fort de l'ouest Cherbourg. The wind was high and the seas were flat, Rattler loved it, we loved it. We had an unplanned spinnaker take-down as a clip popped but the recovery was successful and we used a little bit of white sail time to make some westing in our course. The spinnaker then went up again and was only dropped at the finish line with around four broaches along the way. The boat is so well behaved though she just comes back up again, I guess this is what you want if you're a sleep deprived French single hander...


We finished in 8 hours 45 mins with all smiles. Gareth of the Royal Dorset was pleased to inform us that we had won class 1.. The Glory, The Glory!

A pleasant couple of nights in Cherbourg with a visit to the Fort de la Roule and a cracking sail back on sunday with winds in the high twenties and up and some nice waves to surf down. We tied up on her mooring near “big wellies” after another 8 ¾ hour sail! Bring on the next time.

Lunch Figaro style

Thursday 3. Bad 1st beat. IRC trophy

So Rattler beat us by 27 seconds last week and 26 seconds this week, we must be improving! Truth is our first beat was horrible, we went right and the rest of 'em left, that always kind of worries you. They must have had a decent lift because we rounded the windward mark in a definitive last place, the Melges 24 was in front of us and they were about 3 minutes late for the start.

Only 5 of us this week and the new guys Jack and Taz did a sterling job whilst they are on their fast learning curve, with the jobs of pit/trim and bow respectively they are certainly kept busy.

We were presented with our trophy for the IRC spring series win, the nice thing was that it was full of Thatcher's Gold cider!

Monday night double-handed

It was blowing a little last night, about 26 knots at the top I think. Steve and I were due to continue our monday night dinghy escapades by taking an RS Feva out each, but we thought it best to both not break the kids' boats and possibly get wet.

So FarrOut was dragged out with Steve driving and me running around. No kite flying for us that night although it was perfectly possible as it turned out. We had a great time and learned some more stuff about the boat with no bodies on the rail.

We were pleased to get a fourth place on corrected time in PY. Scoline did a good job of winning, Folio in 2nd and Sole Bay in 3rd.

The  French Olympic team have moved into Weymouth Sailing Club in force, great to see them and I think they'll enjoy their training week in our bay in advance of the olympics next year. The forecast is for decent wind until the middle/end of the week and light shifty stuff after that so that should be perfect for them.

Thursday 1 - fun with Rattler

The first thursday night race at WSC only had 4 boats in the IRC class which was a disappointment but I guess 2 entrants were taken out of the game by Sunday's collision I just hope that the same was not the case for Snow Goose (still smarting over that one).

We were up against the Melges Crazeology, Scoline and (ta da da) the Figaro 1 Rattler! In all the years that I've been friends with Richard this is the first time that we'd sailed against each other helming our own boats. As you can imagine this made the race pretty special, particularly at the first windward mark as we crossed in front of their bows. They were coming in on the starboard lay line and we flopped on top of them in tight cover only to pull ahead to the mark, hoist the Touareg ayso and away. A short lived lead as they're a faster boat and soon got in front. Not far(r) enough though and we were pleased to beat Rattler on corrected time and with a 2nd place to Crazeology who were miles ahead by the end of the two laps of triangle sausage course.

Really pleased to see Rattler out on the race course and I think that they all enjoyed themselves. They'll probably whoop our backsides next week.......

Vice Commodore's Cup

Bank Holiday Monday afternoon and it's the Vice Commodore's Cup, an early season cup race at WSC. After a morning re-gelcoating the dink on the bow after Sunday's mishap and tinkering with the engine I sat in the club out of the rain as a thunderstorm came through. The storm had the effect of tempering the crazy wind to something more manageable if not too light in the big seas, but still the turnout was poor for the race.

We had no chance of winning an all in PY race as the squibs will take care of that but we entered a short-handed crew of Stephen, Steve Dadd and myself. We were all quite busy in the short course with two laps sailed finally. Lovely work with the Touareg kite though including the best gybe we've ever done with it I think!

Fun times.

Bash, Crash, Crunch - Spring Series Finale....

A muscely 20knots+ from the east greeted race 5 and 6 of the YCW spring series and brought with it some sizeable seas. For some reason Farr Out loves this kind of weather. Bashing to weather in the smallest boat in the fleet didn't seem to be a problem and once again we were able to do a good job at keeping with the fleet just to turn round marks to surf away and make gains on the bigger boats.

We were gunning for the title and Scoline and Sapphire were our rivals. Scoline unfortunately only had two of them to crew the boat so couldn't properly compete which was a great shame. We then had the sickening sight of Sapphire laying right over on being T-boned by the other, and first time out, Dehler 33 Rocket after a port/starboard bear away that didn't quite work. Nasty damaging stuff.

Farr Out didn't escape, as late in the second race after some great tussling with Snow Goose after they shut us out at the start and we caught up, we were surfing past to leeward of them and a following wave spun the boat out and we broached in a long curve which ended with a damaged stantion, lifeline and rail for Snow Goose and a crunch on the bow for Farr Out. Horrible, first time I've hit another boat and don't fancy repeating it.

At the end of all this exhilirating racing, and a top boat speed today for us of 10.3 knots, I'm pleased to report that Farr Out has won the YCW Spring Series 2011. We worked hard and our happiness would be complete if we hadn't have had that crunch at the end.

Bring on the rest of the season - evening racing starts this thursday.