End of August Series - no more evening races!

As the nights draw in and we start our autumn and winter sunday mornings, we finished the series with a first. There were only three boats in class with Folio retiring leaving us and Scoline to slug it out. We kept them in touch all race and towards the end just reeled them in as they were carrying too much canvas in the 25-30 knots of breeze. And as we are starting to realise, Farr Out loves a lot of wind and you sail her like a big dinghy.

Great fun, and it's so nice to win!.......

August Series - going well

We're really enjoying the WSC August series at the moment (sailed on monday and thursday evenings). Although we've no chance of winning it, we're snapping at the heels of those that can.

Last night was gusting 30+ knots and we were the only boat in Q class to fly a kite, exhilirating! Chapeau to La Salmo in W class for doing the same. I know we keep saying it but keeping to white sails downwind on Farr Out just can't happen; for one it wrecks the upwind sails when you wrap them around the forestay and we certainly need a lot of wind to get her planing - that's when the fun is.

Due to the beer deficit on board at the moment, we finally managed to clear the Pimms pre-mix left over from the Round the Island.

Ringstead with Kids

An enjoyable day on sunday (apart from bumping the reef!) taking the girls and kids out to Ringstead for the WSC squib barbeque.

A highlight for me was seeing Richard Tolkein's "Orca" Classe 40 right behind us and gybing just on our starboard bow on the way out there:

Another thursday in a dying wind

With her shiny new bottom Farr Out was gliding along on rails last night. The result was academic as once again the faster boats could finish in more breeze and it all but shut off for us. We had some nice sail handling although the race was marred on the start by Scoline who protested us. It was the same old thing of shutting us out at the committee boat end, we had Hooligan above us and could do nothing about it apart from protest Hooligan. We tend to spin out the way when this happens, they did it to us in the Rear Admiral's Cup last year and we were in the same team!

To protest or not to protest......some might say that you need to protest to enforce the rules and overturn the disadvantage that someone has thrown at you. Me, I think it's sad on a thursday night race in the bay and I have no enthusiasm for turning up on a tuesday four weeks hence to listen to somebody whinge to a disinterested protest committe. We don't even have a protest flag on board! (although we could fashion one from an ensign quickly, if you care to bring it on).

Ho hum, I think we'll carry on just having a word when feeling aggrieved - if it doesn't win us a match race against Mathieu Richard or James Spithill then never mind!

Draig are still going for it in the fastnet - overtaking stuff past Bishop Rock I hope.

Fastnet / Figaro

Mostly spending my time watching the Figaro and the Fastnet races on the PC.

Draig O'r Mor, my friends Kev and Kay are competing in the Fastnet so I'm trying to keep tabs on their progress at the hourly scheds. Darren has also gone with them as well as Micky Carter. Good luck to all of them, I'd have loved to have gone with them.

Also watching the Open 60 class with interest - nice to see Sam doing well on Artemis 2, does this mean that the boat has the potential that it was supposed to have? What's going on with Hugo Boss, does she not like going upwind?

Talking of Figaros, last night I went out for the test sail of Rattler's new sails with Richard and Simon, Simon's Dad and John Pollard of Westaway Sails. Sparkly bits of carbon cloth which seemed to pull the boat along, a little overpowered at times in the strong breeze with the No. 1 and full main (both new).

Clean Bottom

We lifted her out this weekend and got rid of that filthy bottom which was obviously the cause of all our recent poor results (ho ho)!
Farr Out got lifted on saturday, positioned on her brand spanking new cradle and back in with a lovely new coat of VC offshore on sunday. We had excellent weather for doing it and maybe a good plan rather than a blustery march day with freezing hands.

Thursday in the rain

Last night was rain and more rain, and guess what? Practically no wind. Hardly any boats showed up from WSC: about 12 squibs and 2 from Q class including us. At least we got a second!

This weekend is lift out and anti-foul so we'll see if the new cradle fits.

Sad to see that Flying Fish sank after a start line collision, glad to see that she's been refloated but I bet that makes a mess inside plus the annoying thing of "oh, yours is Laser 28 that sank isn't it?". My thoughts go out to them.