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.