Winter Series 3 - Sublime to the Ridiculous

After the 40 odd knot debarcle last week we were guaranteed to have no breeze at all this week. Actually there was just enough to sail with a shifty and patchy north westerly of around 6 knots. It actually made the race quite exciting as boat speed and playing the shifts was what it was all about, as if it wasn't all the time!

FarrOut made a good report of ourselves with a win for the Melges 24 Crazeology who managed to keep themselves going, second for Foxed 2 Corby 29, and third for the Sigma 33 Scoline who played a blinder.

Highlight of the race for us was port tacking in front of the entire fleet on the start line....you don't get many of those.

Crazeology, Draig and Scoline hoist in very little breeze.

Winter Series 2

After not getting a race last week due to there being no wind at all, it was irony that this weeks race should also be abandoned due to too much wind or perhaps race officer panic.

Steve Fraser's report on the WSC website shows it quite nicely with a photo of FarrOut goosewinging into the leeward mark after having done an early kite drop.

http://www.wsc.org.uk/node/1688

The upwind section after this point with a lot of wind prompting me to request shortening sail. Sharpo (driving) preferred just to flog the crap out of the sails and rig, I had to point out to Stephen (main trim) that he could say that because it wasn't his rig! We took a reef....a good move as we were then met with 41.8 knots of wind. Interesting that the tough little Laser with 7 on board seemed to fair a lot better in the weather than some bigger and more expensive boats. God love her.

The best bit for us was a lovely chinese gybe following a little lay down. Two crew, Jon and Alice got wet legs in that one. They were smiling afterwards. Rumrunner did something similar but managed to break their spinnaker pole. Shame.

Vendee Globe starts tomorrow 1302 GMT

I can't wait. If there's any yacht racing that I love to follow it's this.

The Daily Sail have had Alex Thomson and Mike Golding on the pontoons walking around the boats and having a chat. There's a few videos on YouTube, this one about Bernard Stamm's Chiminees Poujoulat:



If you're doing the Virtual Regatta Vendee Globe, then I'll be FarrOutGBR814WeySC

Autumn Series Race 4

A glorious 4th place for FarrOut in this sunday's race. A lovely brisk breeze saw us overpowered towards the end of the race. The start was good and we didn't really let the faster boats get away from us too much. Draig was third by 12 seconds corrected and Crazeology, the Melges 24, 8 seconds behind. Winner was Wildfire and second was Foxed 2. Not bad for a 28' cruiser built in 1986!

This looks fun!

Coastal 2012 Crusader 35 from Nick Bastow on Vimeo.

I like the sail tie to keep the leeward runner from flopping around. That could go wrong in the gybe!

Autumn Series 21st October

Let's face it we've been struggling for a few weeks now. We haven't got the boat going and two of our regular crew have been missing. I've been short on motivation the kind of yacht racing demotivation which is only cured by winning!

Then Darren jumps ship to Draig. These things happen. We had to clean her bottom because surely this was the major issue. Good job we did:

As we drove away from the crane she verily slipped through the water. So lacking crew and with something to prove the only option was for me to relinquish the helm. I'll have to admit it I'm better placed running the middle of the boat than helming. All I had to find was someone who was better at helming than in the snake pit...enter Nick Sharp.

Nick made a re-appearance on FarrOut on sunday and I was pretty pleased that he could. Not bad seeing the last boat that he'd driven was a TP52!

Results below:

Now if you consider that we had two kite hoists in the race and had problems on both of them, to do with clips opening, also that we had one newbee crew and one sea sick, then I'm happy with that. Alright it's third but look at the ratings and type of boats:

1.Beneteau First 36.7
2.Dehler 36 db
3.Little Laser 28
4.Sigma 33
5.Corby29
6.X99
7.Dehler 33

Everybody has got their best team out there at this time of year, so should we. That may mean that not everyone is going to get a ride every week for this and the next series but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Yeah I done that!

Cheech and chong for the title.

WSC Autumn Series - Race 1

With 3 of our regular 6 out this week for various reasons and an easterly airflow and predicted sunshine, this race was probably over for us before it started. As the slowest boat in the IRC fleet the predicted happened and the thermal killed the gradient breeze and we finished in very little breeze.

The start had been delayed as the race officer failed to hoist the IRC start and plenty of the fleet had started on the PY start. Bit of a mess and the rib was sent to call boats back.

Our start was a little slow because we were trying to control the pin end. We ended up at the back and we struggled to make our way through the PY tail enders as the breeze dropped.

As we were so far back we missed the pile up at the leeward mark. Effusion, Draig, Excalibur and others will be visiting a protest room sometime soon where no doubt the ins and outs of rule 18.2 will be discussed! Prang.

Sunday Series 3

Some great racing for us on sunday morning, a mid fleet result but I think you need to temper that with a financial touch, we are one of the cheapest teams out there of the IRC boats. Props to Scoline though who did very well on I guess a similar budget!

The start was nailed with a port tack approach, only trouble is the helm decided to vary from the agreed tactic until the rest of the crew shouted at him! Upwind is where we lose it on our boat but the tight triangle sausage played to our strengths of sail handling by a practiced crew and ayso and running kite options.

We had some argie-bargy with Effusion and got the red flag out for a bit. Rules stuff, keeping clear, overlapped boats all that stuff. Good that we're in those issues with much faster boats underneath, shows we're doing something right.

Figaro Surfs

Cool transat AG2R footage 2010, first bit is Sam and Romain on Saveol. Guess he'll be home looking after the bairn during the Vendee Globe.




BTW - can't wait for the Vendee (10th November start. I'm even considering doing the virtual race again, hope I can persuade the boss to buy some smart phones before that. Anyway my forecast is J P Dick for the win. Of course I'll be supporting Safran as usual, or the Jackal? You've got to follow Sam and Alex as well being a Brit I suppose. Anyway, it's exciting. I don't know why I couldn't care less about the Volvo or the America's cup but Open 60s, Figaros even class 40s and I'm there!

Sunday Series Race 2 - Girl Overboard!

The M to B kite leg didn't happen. The MOB did!

A short lived race this week with an enforced retirement after Alice decided to throw herself over the side.

Some idiot cancelled the IRC start so it was a busy line to negotiate with an all-in W class. This was done with a nice, fast 40 deg apparent stbd fetch into the line underneath the reaching in fleet giving us a front row start and good control. The natural gap between shall I say "Q" class boats and the rest let us flop over and take the right. Also plenty of gap to take the port lay line procession into the windward mark (I). There'd been a big shift right pre-start and we'd expected this to continue as the sea breeze established. All good.

Here comes the hoist. Ayso up and filled, jib down. Bit deeper than we'd have liked. I gave Alice the sheet for trimming. Darren calls "Ease" as she'd strapped it. Steve drives down anyway. I call "Trim" as the kite collapses and Alice braces her body to trim on. Trouble was the impatient bloke in the pit (me!) had already trimmed on so Alice pulled against nothing and went straight over the side.

She didn't bob round for very long. A pretty decent MOB recovery and you really see the value of the Laser 28's lovely boarding ladder. If you're going to go swimming in the bay in your jeans then this time of year is probably the best time to do it!

Damp Alice

Dead phone for Alice, a retirement for Farr Out but no real harm done. I think we'll take that as our discard. Thanks to the race officer for laughing when we reported our retirement and MOB recovery.

What a class this would be at WSC

I like to share enthusiasm, when I feel enthusiastic. I'd like to win some lottery money and get one of these for a laugh. In fact I'd like to see a whole fleet of them lined up on Hooker's Dock and craned in for dry sailing.



One can dream. Looks a lot more fun than an SB20.

Last Evening Race - Glorious 3rd

We competed in the last evening race of the season, we now move onto sunday mornings.

Missing Stephen but the rest of the crew were there and it was a beautiful evening with sunshine and about 20 knots from the North.

After a great start in the front row on a short and congested line we did well up the first beat losing a couple of places at the mark and with an ayso hoist which was perhaps too shy. after reaching the first wing mark we found the next leg very deep and we had enough puff behind us to sail the ayso "wing on wing" which was fast. We could have got away with the next reach but were back up the fleet so kept it simple and white sailed it.

A great race but again beaten by the level rating Folio who always seem to overtake us. There can be only one of two reasons: 1, they're better than us 2, Folio is faster than FarrOut. I offered to swap boats for a race to find out. Chris declined politely...hmmm

August Series - Thursday 23rd

For various reasons we've missed all of the preceding August series so no hope of a trophy in this one. But it was great to get back out there with a full crew even if it was a little light.

We had a little swap around putting Jack on the bow and Adam in the pit. A bit of an eye opener for Adam I think but we didn't shout too much at him. It all went well really but a big wrap allowed Folio to catch up and overtake. This was great from them as they'd had to pull a 720 after alot of Committee boat end barging from the W class. The Commodore watching from his Merlin Rocket later described it as "appalling".

FarrOut wasn't involved with this business, our start was the new PTF/lee bow tack the fleet which is cracking when you get your timings right. Got this from a dodgy 80s lecture on YouTube. Worth a watch.



Too busy to take photos, so here's one of Stephen and Corrie from last weekend:

Nowhere Island Race - Nice Pics

Thanks to Alan and Deo McDine for a great photo of FarrOut in control whilst Rocket is in trouble in the recent Nowhere Island circumnavigation.

Also another nice one from Joan Whyte:

Bonxie - IRC win

A great race for FarrOut on friday night. The Bonxie trophy is WSC's annual night race to Arish Mell buoy and back. Not a bad turnout with 5 boats on the line at 2100, 3 of which were IRC rated.

The light wind off the line reinforced as the sun dropped and went forward making the Sponge Bob assymmetric spinnaker the right sail choice. By the turning mark we were thundering along at 9 knots boat speed, even overtaking Effusion the Elan 295. Alice's arms trimming the kite were dropping off.

The fetch back from the mark was quite good for us and we managed to hold Effusion underneath us for a long time before she overtook. Coming into the finish line was light and shifty tacks.

Well done everyone. First place IRC and 2nd in PY to Effusion.

Thursday race - encouraging

After a couple of cancelled races and the Olympic circus rapidly descending on us, boats and crews were eager to get out for the thursday evening race 7th in the series. FarrOut was fully crewed with the usual suspects and leaping for the 10 odd knots of breeze and no rain.

Pre-race Darren had actually asked me if we were still going racing as it wasn't raining or blowing a gale.

So we were a little late on the start and had to duck one boat and tack away from another port/starboard on the first beat. The boat that we ducked, we were able to get on the next tack and then slam dunked them, clever but not very clever in a Laser 28 which won't point for toffee. This all meant that a gap had opened up and us playing follow my leader.

The next leg was a shy reach, perfect for the "Sponge Bob" ayso but sailing underneath the 4ksb boats of the V class limited our catch up potential.

The run on the next leg involved a move worthy of having 6 crew who knew what they were doing:

1. Headsail up stbd tack.
2. Ayso leeward drop. Helmsman heads up.
3. Spinnaker gear round for port pole. clip on to sym kite. Tack line off prod, becoming pole downhaul.
4. Gybe at mark.
5. Pole up port side. Tweeker down. Pre-feed guy.
6. Hoist. Two bags back. Away we go....phew.

The new longer pole and the S2 kite were powerful for us in these conditions and we were gaining on all of the fleet. Encouraging point No. 1

A slick drop and heading up at the leeward mark saw us chasing Folio (MGC27) to the line, ready to go around again. It was not to be as the race officer was going to finish us just when we'd stepped up to the game. On this last beat though we were catching Folio so I think the bit more pre-bend I put in the rig and the weight on the rail did us favours. With some breeze calling and luffing for height thrown in. Encouraging point No. 2

We weren't ready to go and tie up just yet so we went for a little ayso ride and some gybing practice with Darren timing the gybes. We got them down to under 10 seconds. Encouraging point No. 3

Upwind back to port we played with the headsail car positions. Reckon that we sailed the whole race with the top of the sail twisted out, not good in moderate airs! Car position marked so we won't do that again. Encouraging point No. 4

Fifth in PY and 2nd under IRC tandem score.

Tour de France a Voile

That's the stuff. Pic of an Archambault M34 sailing in the Tour de France a voile at the moment. Tronking.

Weymouth Regatta 2012

Our regatta this year was down to two days saturday and sunday. What we got was one day as saturday was the biggest downpour, it honestly did not stop raining all day and that coupled with a SSE wind of anywhere between 6 kts and 40 kts meant that the bay was lumpy and horrible. The PRO Adrian Patterson did right in eventually canning the entire day.

Sunday was an all together different day with sunshine and a moderate breexe which built in the late afternoon. The race commitee wer able to squeeze in three races.
FarrOut had four aboard for sunday, we could have done with one more in the end, the short courses meant a lot of sail handling and it was all a bit busy.

The results show that there were three sigma 33s in our class, a half tonner, an Elan 333 and evidently a J80 although I thought this was in PY1!

The first race is probably best forgotten, I was driving and had a nightmare. Race 2 Stephen drove and I guess we got into our groove a bit better. A nice windshift meant that we could lay the windward mark in one tack and a start in the right place meant that we were second to get there after the Elan. High Hopes the half tonner was being much more close winded than us and underneath and kept pointing into us, so much so that they hit us to a hail of "protest" from me - you don't hear that very much. I get a bit angry if you hit FarrOut!

Unfortunately we couldn't keep our lead on the Sigmas, we were just not good enough upwind in what was the longest race of the day. There's probably a number of reasons for this but I fancy we have less pre-bend in the mast than last year and I'm going to put some more in. Steve was beating himself up about it though.

The third race was a decent showing from us even if the starboard primary winch stopped working just as we crossed the start line. Steve did a great job of cross winching us through the race. But...it's another broken bit. Doesn't seem to stop recently.

Great fun races for us though. Full team and more pre-bend next year.

140th out of 457 finishers. I'll settle for that.

This weekend was the annual J P Morgan Round the Island race where 1600 odd boats race round the Isle of Wight. Quite a good showing from Weymouth boats this year and the Lifeboat pub in East Cowes on firday night seemed to be mostly Weymouth Sailing Club and Castle Cove Sailing Club.

A nice quick delivery trip upto Cowes on friday with a sprightly breeze behind us. Unfortunately the "Touareg" assymmetric spinnaker died about half a mile out of Weymouth.

The race itself was another breezy one, with the best start we've ever had in an RTI. We short tacked down the island side to cheat the foul tide and kept a good eye on the numbers. When we got to the needles the decision had to be made and I'd already said, half meaning it, that we were going inside the Varvassi wreck this year. With an aerial photograph on deck we followed a quarter tonner through the slot between Goose Rock and the wreck to look up at the lighthouse towering above us. Exhilirating...

The next SB3 kite got launched and we flew off after our chase at 11 knots boat speed. Red Fox is an RF290 from Dartmouth which is essentially a Laser 28. We were just catching her when "puff", we blew another kite. Jib up, reef out, and we rounded St Catherine's. As it happens the wind had gone forward so white sail was the right call anyway.

We saw Crewcut from CCSC just before the next kite hoist to power us up to Bembridge Ledge buoy. Our new Ullman S2 spinnaker went up and we powered off on a lovely downwind sail surfing down the waves. A difficult gybe meant the inevitable broach and we damaged our new kite! Tears - but we still had one left so the red and white spinnaker went up as seen in the previous post.

Round Bembridge ledge we set off on the fetch becoming a beat upto Ryde. The wind was strong now and we were probably a little overpowered. The short tacking along Ryde sands to stay out of tide is always a worrying time and we did bump bottom once as we straightened up in the tack back out.

With no further issues other than some fluky wind off Osborne house we broke the finish line. We never could catch Red Fox but there were a lot of faster boats behind us.

Our finish was 15th in IRC division 3C, 140th overall out of 457 IRC finishers and an elapsed time of 08:12:34 - 20 minutes faster than last year. I'm happy.

Thanks to all the FarrOut crew who did a great job. The level of silence on the boat as we pushed her downwind was impressive. As I started to struggle on the helm, they'd already anticipated and the mainsheet eased, the kicker eased, and the spi trim eased - all to gently go back on once she was back on the rails. All in absolute silence, everyone knowing their job. Brilliant.

Sunday's delivery back to Weymouth upwind in 30 knots with big seas is best erased from our minds. Hideous.

Check out the battle flag at the top!

FarrOut crew: Alice Perrett, Jack Baker, Adam Greaves, Darren Aston, Stephen HB, Jez Rees

Round the Island Photo

Report to come today hopefully....

Ready for the 2012 J P Morgan Round the Island Race

Foregoing racing last night we put some final preparations together before next weekend's race. Steve and I dived the boat in the lovely warm waters of Weymouth Bay and polished her bottom nicely. I was surprised by the amount of barnacles on there.

We then went for a sail and launched the new kite held out there with the new pole. All very satifactory. The crispness and slipperyness really help out in those gybes. Seemed fast but I guess we need to line up with some other boats with it.




Delivery to Cowes on friday is looking a wet and windy affair at the moment. Joy.

IRC division 3C - not a division I'd want to be in given the choice. With the Quarter Ton Cup running this week in Cowes all the quarter tonners are in this division. We will have to be happy with our IRC overall position, because we stand little chance of getting enough distance between us and those rocket ships with pop star crews!

New S2 Kite

Just taken delivery of a very crispy new kite from Ullman Sails. We felt that we were undergunned downwind especially in the light so as all our old kites seemed to be exploding it's good to have something new.




Not that this weekend's Round the Island race looks as though it's going to be a light airs affair.

This spinnaker is the same area as our present rating and we have a longer pole to fly it with, the STL length having increased with our bowsprit addition.



I was up till midnight on friday splicing the bridles on that!

Can I interest anyone in this?

Farr 400 'Ichi Ban' doing 20 knots+ from Airborne Agency on Vimeo.

Monday 2 Race 2

One aspect of a true dictator's reign of terror is control of the media.

There will be no report of my spell on the foredeck in this race other than school children will be taught that it was a glorious episode in our shared history resulting in a marvellous victory.

Spring Long Distance

The Spring Long Distance is one of our traditional courses so it might have been a long distance in a Weymouth Falcon but is not a long haul in a racing yacht. Basically up and down covering the bay and Portland Harbour.

Yachts entered this year were diverse from the fast: Arcsine - Arcona 370, Foxed Again - Corby 29; the medium (Us)and the slow, Spinaway - Hunter Medina. We had to watch as the two faster boats sailed away from us.

Originally we were going to sail double handed but we invited Iain Jones along as well seeing though it was a nice day. We were third by 38 seconds corrected!

Not Concerned about Winning?

We don't really mind when we don't do well on FarrOut and we're not that bothered about handicaps, the thrill of the ride and close racing is what gets our blood up.

I've seen this for sale and it looks a whole lot of fun for £16K

http://gweekquay.co.uk/index.php?option=com_brokerage&id=92&view=boat&Itemid=34


http://yachts.apolloduck.co.uk/feature.phtml?id=239384

Monday 2 - race 1

This is a series that we're not fully crewed for like thursdays. Looking at the forecast earlier in the week I thought it would be nice just for Steve and I to double hand the race. A bit busy on short course evening racing maybe so it was good that Alice was able to join us as well. She seemed to enjoy herself even though she wanted to do anything but be in the middle of the boat with all the strings, so that's exactly where we put her!

It seems to have been blowing and raining forever, quel estival? We were maybe too conservative to start off with a No. 4 headsail and a reef prompting comments about our main halyard being stuck. The No. 4 seemed to be doing much better though on a "2 holes clear" setting on the jib track.

Bill Barker was OD and set a triangle sausage course which meant we set up with starboard pole asymmetric for our first bear away hoist, unfortunately the port sheet clip popped off on the hoist (dodgy bowman) so we had to hurriedly drop, clip on, re-hoist and gybe at the wing mark. This went well but as we swiped the stern of Evisa, who was white sailing, competitive Phil indicated that he'd defend and we ended up below and alongside upto the leeward mark. Rubbish, but gave us an opportunity to hurl abuse. Coming into the leeward mark we pulled off a shake reef out/headsail up/ spinnaker drop in about 20 metres of water which was fun.

The next kite leg was deep so we selected the symmetrical and carried out a nice gybe without any real problems.

It was a fun race but we were fourth out of four....Nice to be driving again though.

A photo from the monday before last when we led the fleet into the leeward mark. Nice:



I love seeing all that lot behind us.

Alice Helm's Deep

WSC's Fanfare trophy is one of the year's crew races. In fact the other two used to be Ladies races until will made them "non-gender specific" this year. We thought that we'd get a lady to helm anyway, mostly because we felt really bad for getting her to step off the boat for the light airs race the week before!

Alice did a sterling job with a deserved fourth place, by the end of the race you wouldn't have thought that she hadn't helmed a race in FarrOut before and she was telling us all what to do! The three boats ahead had much more experienced helms.



L to R: Jack,Adam, Stu, Steve and Alice

Stuck in a Calm

Disco Dave took a nice picture of FarrOut on thursday before last sitting there in no wind at all. Thanks Dave

Monday 1 Race 6

We managed to get out for a monday night race this week. Steve, Stu and myself were joined by Darren in a rare appearance and we picked up Steve Fraser off a pontoon as we headed out the harbour. This turned out to be a strong team, which was what was required after we had a cracking front row start and selected the correct side of the first, short beat, this put us in a commanding position and we found ourselves leading the fleet of faster boats into the leeward mark. No mistakes were possible.

As always Folio pipped us at the last. We had a great tussle with Scoline though and were in front of them most of the race and had a photo finish. A great race and it was smiles all round.

New Traveller

Ooh...Harken.

FarrOut retains the YCW IRC Spring Series

Although the entries this year were low. Farr Out defeated the Beneteau 36.7 Wildfire to take the IRC spring series for the second year running.

Sunday morning started off light with clouds showing that a sea breeze would arrive, swinging the breeze right and building to superb sailing conditions in the bay. As we were sharing the bay with pre-olympic match racing and about 500 kids qualifying for GBR in the oppies, the race officer Derek Abbot set two races of windward/leewards over by the cliffs. Unfortunately only three boats turned out for the line: Wildfire, us and Effusion (Elan 295)the only entry in PY, Orion having been damaged in last week's storm.


At the club it appeared that we only had three of us Alice, Adam and me. Not enough to sail the boat effectively against fully crewed opposition. Luckily Nick Sharp, my old skipper from Pink Stink and Marionette days was available so the helm was given to him so that I could work the middle of the boat. This was a great solution to our problem and with Alice on mainsheet and Adam at the bow we were all ready to sail the boat well. This we must have done because we get to keep that big glass bowl again.


Now we've just got to win IRC autumn and winter series.......


Congratulations everyone.

Old Dutch in the Dark

Thursday 1 racing has become an all PY affair as for various reasons the two or three IRC boats available are racing with the W class for this series. I must admit having more boats racing together is fun. Last night's race was sailed in fairly light winds prompting Stephen to request the presence of a genoa. I was expecting another sail to arrive but he brought with him "Old Dutch", a sail that I'd forgot that we even possessed. It's probably 20+ years old and was made by Hagoort sails in Holland. This sail caused much hilarity as Adam the bowman had never had to tack a genoa before and ended up in some entanglement:

He was overzealous at one point dragging the cloth down the side of the boat and ended up "hiking" off the leeward guardwires holding onto a sheet and having to be rescued by Steve and Jack. A chaotic race that was probably too long for the conditions saw us sailing on into dark with lights on. The follow my leader instinct meant that most of the fleet went to the wrong windward mark, then the wrong gybe mark. After this we bailed out and changed course for the correct windward mark. There were 3 finishers, Crazeology and Evisa who had both sailed the right course and us who had doubled back. Here's the view we had of the committee boat as we came to the finish line:

The great thing was that with no traveller (new Harken one on order) and a 20+ year old sail we were excellently fast out of the start. Well done team for a funny and unusual race.

Boomkicker

Still can't get a photo on that Laser 28 forum!

Instructional

On board video sems to be getting more prevalent as the technology allows it. There's been some great stuff coming out of Spi Ouest 2012, with the J111 team Blur from Sweden getting video out before the professionals.

This one below is from Noel Racine's JPK 10.10 Foggy Dew, a regular in RORC racing. Anyway it's great to be onboard a well sailed fast boat, you can always learn stuff.

Check out 1.45, sacrificing height for speed; 4.02 nice windward drop; 5.00 driving away from dirty air, speed up and tack away; 7.00 wide mark rounding and sharp cut in for the inside line.

Spring Series 2 and 3. Close

On a blustery, rainy sunday morning the second and third races of the YCW spring series were held. Again, a disappointing show in IRC with just ourseleves and Wildfire the 36.7 turning out.

We had a bit of an issue as Adam was unavailable to do the bow, and try as I might I just couldn't get more people to join us. So Alice, Steve and myself were joined by Ben who was really thrown into the deep-end on the foredeck. Because of this we decided that we would only use the asymmetric and gybe downwind if we had to. Whilst practicing before the race we had the kite wrap of all wraps and went so far downwind that we were late over the start line. It all went better after that in race 2 but the downwind leg probably lost it for us, although we did judge the gybe angle perfectly and that's something that isn't as easy as it would appear. Second by about 2 mins corrected.

The second race of the day started with some controvosy as we had a tussle with Echo at the pin end, after the gun and them probably closer winded than we are. We soon drove over the top and were away. The triangle leg was good for us as we tronked along at 8.5-9.0 knots. The run on the sausage leg was deemed so deep pre-start that we had no other option than to rig a symmetrical kite. We did well down here with the wind swinging to put us on the mark without having to gybe, phew! We lost to Wildfire by 3 seconds corrected. Happy about that as they've got new sails and a full pop-star crew, and sailed well enough to deserve it -especially after the slightly dodgy result last week.

Upwind we sometimes had issues and we didn't really have enough weight on the rail. Ben and Alice both did exceptional jobs. Good fun even though it rained.

Adam Checks out the Tuff Luff

YCW Spring Series Race 1 - Victory

Victory in our first race of the season, albeit somewhat hollow as there were only two IRC boats coming to the line; us and Wildfire the Beneteau 36.7. The upshot was that we won by over two minutes. Hooray, but not much of a confort as we definately would have lost to Effusion the Elan 295 if they'd  had an IRC cert. Got to be in it to win it I suppose.

It was an all in IRC/PY start.The race started well for FarrOut with a perfectly timed pin end start, keeping our air clear and diving to the favoured left. When Wildfire tacked back in after rolling over us, we went as well to stay with the race rather than banging the left corner which was definately a lifting tack. This meant that Orion the Achilles 9m got to the windward mark before us, though by the wing mark we'd caught up and they messed around on the gybe and we were able to cut inside and overtake.

Wildfire and Effusion romped away, but we knew that the race was not with the other PY boats. It was on the deep run that it all went wrong for us with a horrible spi/headsail wrap. We impeded Orion's progress and let them through as we sorted ourselves out and got back in the groove.

Not a faultless showing from us, but enough for a win. You have to presume that Wildfire had issues and were messing up as well in order not to win. But I guess on short course racing with lots of sail handling and in a fair amount of wind it's difficult for the bigger boat to beat a Laser 28.....well sailed or not!

Thanks to Iain Jones and the race team for an exhilirating race to start the season off for us. Glad to see that Steve Dadd, sailing on Orion, is back fighting fit after receiving a blow to the head and getting carted off to hospital.

Spring Series starts this weekend.

We managed to drag a full crew out onto the water last sunday for a bit of pre-season training. Yes, we were very rusty and it was a worthwhile exercise. I think we all felt much better after about 50 gybes!

The start of the Weymouth Sailing Club season is this weekend with the Tony Bennett trophy - a pursuit race which will be won by a Squib or a Merlin Rocket. For us bigger boats it would have been a useful practice but we'll keep our powder dry for the YCW spring series which commences on sunday 15th.

Just to get us into the mood, here's some nice video from last weekend's Spi Ouest, check out 0.45s!

Back in the Water

All ready for the new season. FarrOut is back on her mooring. Stephen and I managed to take her for a sail for about 3/4 hour. It felt like I hadn't been sailing for ages!

Winter Yard Work - new bits

The yard work is progressing ready for launch on 10th March, early this year due to losing a couple of weeks out of the sailing programme because of the olympics.

We have a new Excel V12 backstay tackle:

Also the bowsprit now has the bobstay fitted in 4mm wire and the tack block is fitted on a soft loop using a bit of pipe insulation to make it stand up, this may not be a permanent solution. We will still be using the pole downhaul as a tack line for the ayso so need the snatch block, we are considering having a permanent tack line.....but where to fit the clutch?

Sprit Fixing

A day of maintenance on board FarrOut. Last week we had to remove the pulpit to feed a new wire for the bow light, it seemed a good idea to also remove the stainless bow fitting. Luckily a good fabricator friend of mine quickly turned around a fierce fixed bowsprit construction:

The extra out the bow should make those asymmetric gybes slicker and get the luff tighter for reaching. Hopefully the added projection will enable us to float the kite deeper.

Great stuff, now to declare it to IRC......we now check out with a longer STL, still shorter than the class pole though.

Boxing Day Photos

Rattler broaches on hoist

Rounding D

FarrOut hoist

Tacking down the harbour

Thanks to Phil Samways for the long lens photos.

Delayed Post

Apologies for not posting much recently, the Christmas season has been especially busy this year. FarrOut had a great Boxing Day race for which we invited Darren to have a go at driving her. The most notable part was the general recall of the all-in crusier class start. I'm sure it was caused by my saying to the crew that if we were over the line they couldn't have seen us on the committee boat due to the amount of yachts bunched there and the size of them.

We were certain that our second start was not goint to be as good as the first but sure enough we were on the front row again; there's been nothing wrong with our starts in recent series.

The results (on PY) weren't of much interest to us as we were probably stuffed beating up the river in a dying breeze. That coupled with a poor deep run where we were stuffed by the white sailing Seaquest 32 "Spindrift".

On wednesday 28th FarrOut came out of the water to sit for a while on her cradle, not for long this year, we just gotta try to get all the work done. The most remarkable thing about the haul out was the state of the anti-foul, we just had a light covering of slime and this was easily pressure washered off. We weren't expecting this and immediately rushed out and bought another tin of Seajet Emporer in white!

As we're out of the water we once again missed the New Year's Day race, which was a shame but you have to stop at one point. Sam and I went to watch from the stone pier and Weymouth Sailing Club though.

Draig takes line honours in NYD race