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.