Well that was the Round the Island....

What a great weekend. Friday's delivery to Cowes was a blast; Rattler, Manana and FarrOut left Weymouth together and the two MG335s Tumbarumba and Crewcut were just in front. We had a lovely sail with a powered up dead deep kite run across Christchurch bay and plenty of surfs. When we turned the corner at the needles in about 23 kts and big waves the inevitable happened in the gybe and FarrOut had a little laydown, well quite a big lay down really. It's even more exciting when you've got spiky rocks just on your right hand side. We thundered down the Solent, and as we dropped the sails outside the entrance to the Medina river at Cowes I made the mistake of not checking that we didn't have any lines in the water whilst the engine on. So, once more I've been swimming in my pants in the Medina.....after I cut the rope away we were fine.

FarrOut on her berth in East Cowes

The race on Saturday was a classic. It was blowing 30 kts from the south west so the beat to the needles was hard on everybody. I was driving so didn't get so wet but I was glad to get off the line as the start sequence was crazy, we were reaching backwards and forwards pre-start at 8 knots with hundreds of other boats. Our start was good and it took until Newtown river at least before Rattler caught up with us. We waved at the other Laser 28 entered in our class, Nemesis, only to watch as 20 seconds later she was T-boned by an Impala I think. Horrible.

By the needles, Harry the extra crewman was quite seasick but God bless him stayed on the rail. We turned the corner and hoisted the ayso for a charging blast down to St. Cats. Darren recorded the best boatspeed ever record of 13.8 kts. At St. Catherine's we had 3 being sick out the transom and so we didn't go for the symmetrical spinnaker in the deeper run. We kept it safe but still at about 9-10 knots and didn't break anything or anybody. FarrOut needed to go faster though and so I was pleased when the gybe location arrived and we could put the ayso back up for another scream up to Bembridge Ledge bouy.

We were discussing later on why it is that in a race like this big cruising boats close the distance with boats like ourselves and Rattler who are clearly on the edge of control all the time? Racing rules aside, I'd be keeping out the bl**dy way! But we didn't hit anything although we saw a lot of carnage, especially in the multi-hull fleet who seemed to be readily turning upside down.

Another beat along the top of the island balancing the fine line of cheating tide and not going aground and it was a successful race over. Hopefully Stephen has got some video footage.

Sunday's delivery back was fun as the dense fog and no wind meant that all your yachtmaster training had to come out. It's always different around the corner and as we rounded St Aldhelm's head back into Weymouth bay the fog started clearing and the breeze kicked in and we spinnakered back home. Exhausted but exhilirated.

Darren and Stephen toast another 10 knot surf

So down to the numbers...there were 3 Laser28s in the race Zorra in the ISCRS class and ourselves and Nemesis in IRC. I'm gutted that they could be taken out of the race like that, it could so easily happen when there's so many boats racing and I expect that they had a long delivery just to get to the start line. Anyway:

	FarrOut		Zorra
Elapsed Time	08:31:46		08:38:18
Corrected Time	07:38:33		08:33:38

We were 16/32 finishers in class IRC 3C, Zorra 16/42 finishers.

Overall results IRC:

FarrOut   197/465
Rattler     222/465

Overall results ISCRS:

Zorra       272/664
Manana  242/664

The different rating systems don't make the result credible and Mark from Zorra said that they were 11 minutes late for the start....The most interesting thing is the closeness of the elapsed time to go around the Island. The hulls must be pretty similar but the boats are set-up very differently. We also had totally different sail plans for the weather Zorra with 2 reefs in the mainsail and us with full main and No. 4 headsail.

Great Stuff, oh and well done to Snow Goose the Sigma 33  as well who were in our class and beat us. I think we can be proud, the boats ahead of us in class were mostly Sigmas which are great boats and hard to beat, and the very hot quarter tonners who are also incredibly well sailed.

Round The Island Race this Saturday

The annual pilgrimage to the J P Morgan Round the Island Race happens this weekend. FarrOut will be going across to Cowes this friday ready for an 0700 start in class IRC 3 on saturday morning for the anti-clockwise tour of the Isle of Wight.

Forecast isn't looking too bad at the moment. Downwind there, fairly breezy race and downwind back. Can't get better than that for us but we'll see what happens.

There are 1908 boats entered this year which is a record and a reported 16,000 sailors. I guess we'll just try not to hit anyone else and rock hop around the bottom of the island to try and stay out of foul tide.

FarrOut is going with four of us this year Stevo, Darren, Disco Dave and myself. Could probably have done with one more but maybe we'll pick up one along the way!

Two other L28s are entered, Nemesis in our class and Zorra in the ISC class.

It's always a special day so looking forward to it.

Mrs Mitchell's Salver - Victory

The first ladies race of the season gave us some problems, with Tracy on the other side of the world the natural choice was Celia for the helm position being a regular crew member. Trouble was that she wanted to sail her 420 instead, after a week of trying to organise an alternative helmswoman God intervened and made it blow fairly hard. This meant Celia was able to drive FarrOut and I would be able to put my 100kg on the rail!

As it was we ended up with 8 crew, 4 of whom were under 21. This may seem a lot to fit on the side of a Laser 28 but we were sailing under PY and it turned out to be perfect. Stephen rigged a mini video camera to the boom so hopefully there will be some footage to post but it may just be dead after the dunking it got in a massive broach.

Paul Barford was race officer and set us a triangular course. Of course we had the balls to hoist the Touareg bringing on what must be the ride of the season so far. Boat speed topped out at something over 11 knots as FarrOut lifted her bow and planed in pursuit of Rattler taking lumps out. This was exactly the kind of weather you need in an L28, flat seas and 25 kts+ and everyone sitting at the back trying damn hard to keep the rudder dug in.

There's now a trophy for Celia to pick up at the prizegiving. Well done to her and everyone.

Thurs 6/6 - Rattler wins it. Scoline gets series.

A nice bit of wind here in Weymouth at the moment the olympic hopefuls in the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta have been having a marvellous time in our bay.

We had a bit of trouble pre-start when the No. 3 luff came out of the tuff-luff and was stuck during a change down to No. 4, we did well to get the course and get to the line. Ended up OCS and had to dip back, Scoline doing to us what we did to them last week.

Stephen drove and did a good job around the square course set by the dinghy class Captain Tim Bowden. We had an issue though...a lazy spinnaker sheet managed to get itself stuck between the rudder and the hull meaning that we couldn't gybe and had to white sail one leg which effectively lost us the race. All we knew though was that there was rope stuck underneath at the stern so we daren't turn the engine on. Taz tacked us back up the harbour and we sailed onto our mooring. All fixed now.

Rattler sailed well to take the win but managed to break a few bits on the way round. Didn't get the series though as Scoline had done enough.

Next thursday is a ladies race so hopefully Darren's wife Kerry will be our helm, monday will see some more dinghy sailing for me in the club OK. I really was into it last monday - might have to get me one of them!

Thurs 5/6 - training

As the series is out of our grasp, we decided last week to have a bit of a change around in order to ready ourselves for the next big challenge of the Round the Island race as due to the length it pays to change the helms around. Taz was off rock climbing so Jack got to experience the foredeck in the light winds, Celia helping and flying the kite, Me in the pit, Steve on mainsheet and Darren driving.
Our start was good with Darren pushing Scoline off the line and OCS to a cheer from Rattler. We then went alright until a patch of no wind opened up on us and we saw Rattler and Crazeology sail away from us. Next thing we know we were sailing too high and too slow and Scoline got in front. Still that's training for you. Next week it's Stephen's drive...

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.

Spring Series 4 - Long Distance. FarrOut first.

Easter sunday saw the long distance race of the YCW spring series. As we got to the boat the wind was peaking at 20 knots from the north with the potential to die from there. And so it was in a fickle breeze that we beat up to H off the seafront, reach off to O at the end of the pleasure pier and what should have been a nice ayso reach at 90 degrees over to R at Ringstead just kept going forward. We held the touareg at 60 degs as long as we could but we knew we had to go to white sail in order to launch the symmetrical kite for the run over to G off Grove Point on Portland. The crew of FarrOut kept working and kept us moving the right way. We chased the two Sigmas down to the beach, every time it went light we gained and as soon as they had a puff they went away again. As we reached H to turn for the line we managed to get in front of Snow Goose but they soon overtook again as we blundered a pressured kite hoist.

We'd stayed with the fleet and over almost 3 hours our rating was enough to give us the win.  this puts ourselves, Scoline and Sapphire all on six point as we come into the final two races of the series next sunday. We could do this......it would be a great way to start the season, but I won't pretend it's not going to be difficult.

Iain Jones took some photos from Spindrift, this one as we were coming up to G.

Race 2 and 3. Light Airs Drifting

A gorgeous sunny day but no wind to speak of. My team talk on the mooring went something like this "We have to be on the money at the start or we've already lost. Today will all be about how tall your rig is and we've got the shortest one in the fleet!".

Race 2 was a decent start which put us to windward of the fleet, we were the first boat to tack to the right which I think paid for us, a couple of ayso reaches and a beat back to the line and it's all over. Third on corrected time.

Race 3 we had a lovely start at the commitee boat, the pin end bias sent the rest of the fleet that way keeping our air clear. The wind had filled just for this first beat but once we were around the corner it was difficult to keep the kite full. This time we were chasing Scoline who went deep looking for mark C and initially we followed although the GPS told us they were going the wrong way. We corrected and gybed back which probably gave us a better angle into the mark (if we'd have had the Touareg up and not the red symmetrical). Scoline had her big genoa and the next leg went close reach/fetch/beat as we went back to finish at the windward mark. This was the time in light airs when dropping the genoa from our sail inventory was a bad move....It was painful upto the line at sub 2 knots of boat speed. Forth on corrected time.

Not bad results, FarrOut now has 9 points with half of the 6 race series complete and 2 discards allowable.

Next week is the long distance race, so if we can stay up there then the longer the time racing then the more our rating can help us. Let's start praying for wind now. The beer locker is nice and full though!

YCW Spring Series - Race 1. You can't get closer!

A gorgeous sunny day with a light NE airflow was predicted to give us problems being the slowest boat in the IRC fleet and a dying breeze meaning that the faster boats would finish with more wind than we had. Luckily the wind died from the start so it was a problem for everyone.

Our starting tactics were good but backfired being shut out by Spindrift and subsequently by Wildfire. This meant that we were last over the line but it got better from there as we sailed directly to the windward mark. The windshift and lack of wind troubled our pre-start asymmetric kite choice but as there was no wind it didn't really matter, the well considered gybe however put us on a tight reach upto mark H - perfect. The next, and final, leg was white sail and Darren called our tack perfectly to lay the line. Farr Out was 2nd by one second corrected time to Scoline.

A good start to the series and well done especially to Dave for his first time on the boat and a good job in the pit and Taz for his first time on the bow.

Link to results: http://www.weysailclub.org.uk/race-results

FarrOut hits the Water

Saturday evening saw a smooth launch for FarrOut and Sole Bay in advance of the planned sunday morning launch. All went very well apart from the rubber from the cradle pads sticking to the anti-foul a little but we had some time to paint over these.

She looks nice sitting on her new mooring in the cove at Weymouth Harbour. I'm hoping that this mooring is going to make parking short handed really easy.

Sunday 10th April is the start of the YCW spring series and we're entered into the IRC class. Better get all the sails and stuff back on board then!